GW Lightning Arc Strangers ICE ON THE HEART
by LoveyouHateyou
Summary: For Karina and KhalaniK.  Treize's legacy, and what Zechs, Une, and Marimaia can make of it.
1. Chapter 1

**GW Strangers Arc – The Kindness of Strangers**

Fandom: GW  
Characters: Zechs, Marimaia, Une, Treize  
Warnings for all chapters: References to intimacy.  
Disclaimer for entire story: GW and its characters belong to whoever holds the rights to them. I made up this story.  
Summary: Kindness is in our power, even if fondness is not. (Samuel Johnson). Treize's legacy, and what Zechs, Une, and Marimaia can make of it.

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**Episode 1 – Look for wind in a field.1**

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**_Dust. It gets everywhere. Grinds between your teeth, makes your eyes ooze, chafes down there._

Hunched in his high-backed office chair, Zechs bit his lip as he ran his fingers over the old-fashioned keyboard, clackety-clack, stroke by stroke closing down his computer terminal. His hands stuck in fingerless gloves. Even in his rollneck jumper and padded trousers, he felt the chill of the tiny room, kept at a steady fiften degree. The small, unasked-for, gratefully accepted privilege of an extra three degree, afforded to nobody else on Terraforming Project.

_And all that crap about taking time off..._

His desk and files were housed in what looked like a small glass cupboard at one end of the research centre. A laboratory at the heart of the vast complex of hive-like, pressurised structures, blistering like dark grey foam in the red Martian landscape. Along the walls of the lab, arrays of consoles, studded with the controls of the terraforming project. A handful of technicians were on shift, managed by one senior engineer.

_Why did I let her talk me into this?_

He leaned back and watched the windows on the screen wink out, one by one. Outside, frozen dust drifted across the plain of Vastitas Borealis. Its reddish hue belied the bitter cold of the Martian summer where day-temperatures at the equator reached just above twenty degrees, and the North and South remained frozen. Extra-strong wind turbines, rotating on magnetic fields instead of bearings that the dust would have ruined, their bodies set on sturdy, low pylons to make them withstand the storms; and arrays of extra-sensitive photocells supplied power to the terraforming project. In spite of their special construction and newly developed materials, the machines wore quickly and needed constant maintenance. Some of it was computerised, carried out with remotely controlled drones, and some of the more advanced machines had limited Artificial Intelligence, but the human mind was still needed to deal with the more complex unforeseen.

Zechs had taken the tour of the planet when he arrived, less out of curiosity than necessity, the cool acknowledgement of a soldier that he needed to know the lay of the land if he wanted to join battle and win. Ice caps on the poles – water in the North, carbon dioxide in the South of the planet – and frozen wastelands in between. Dust storms and avalanches of dirty snow pouring at snail's pace into enormous craters; the incomprehensible, soaring vastness of Olympus Mons, and jagged canals wider than the Siberian Yenisei...

He felt his chest tighten and rose abruptly. A few more Earth days, then he would take the newly established, regular Mars fast shuttle to the Baikonur cosmodrome. The new space liner operated when the orbits of Earth and Mars started closing on each other, through the period of closest approach that happened around every two years, to the end of the near phase. It was for personnel and urgent freight. The older transport ships took much longer but were capable of carrying larger tonnage, such as the terraforming machinery.

Once he had recovered and passed a battery of prescribed medical checks and fitness tests, he would use his personal jet to fly from Baikonur home to Siberia. He would go back to Russia, to the estate that once had belonged to Treize's family.

_And now it's only me..._

He reached for his coat, made of highly insulating material that offered limited protection against the biting cold – the corridors were heated to just above zero degree celsius, bearable because it was cinderdry, and the pressure there was less than in the working and living quarters, to conserve energy. He didn't particularly like Mars. The cold, the constantly varying pressures, the loss of control that came with low gravity, and the silence that made the place feel like congealed loneliness. Sounds muffled, as if everything was wrapped in cotton wool. The disorientation of the never-adjusting sense of distance, always fooled by the lack of sound and the swathes of dust. Movements, a little too forceful, sending people afloat and scrabbling for purchase on the ceiling of a corridor. Endless fake daylight pouring into the warren of hallways linking the working and living quarters. Most people working here were either die-hards or burnt out after a few weeks. The die-hards formed a company of engineers, military personnel, researchers and mechanics, some of them also students at the Terraforming Academy. Working conditions were raw and generic. This, combined with boot-camp based suitability tests and word-of-mouth, ensured that there were only two women among four dozen men – a psychiatrist and a psychological analyst – and Zechs thought that this balanced just fine.

_Trust Une to sort things out this way._

Zechs locked his office and groped his way towards the central comms station. Communication was still patchy, with one large room divided into booths, most equipped with audiophones, plus a couple of videophones. The strings of radiation, encoding messages and images, were a spiderthread linking the station to Earth, but the spaceport was the gateway to home. But Mars was changing from a colony of misfits and undesirables into a test for the rugged. The newest generation of space cruisers could bridge the distance to Earth in less than two weeks when the planets were close, although the old battleships that took almost ten months were still in commission, carrying bulk and heavy cargo. At least the station crews did not have to wait years anymore for the planets to come close to each other before setting off for home. Crew rotation was on a sliding basis, and the maximum permitted stay for anyone had just been cut from seven to three years, followed by a compulsory year on Earth.

Nonsense, Zechs thought, considering that colonists on the Lagrange colonies lived permanently on those flimsy, man-made structures, but the Project Management Group for the Mars terraforming project had insisted on this old-fashioned approach.

_To keep us rooted in homesoil, so we don't go off like the colonists. Treize, that could have been your idea. You were full of ideas that Easter when you got back from L3..._

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**Interlude 1 – Snow in Spring**

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**Spring had arrived with tufts of snowdrops in the park behind the old house, and anemones pushing through the snow under the forest trees. The river grew louder under its mantle of ice. Yet winter had not withdrawn yet; what thawed during the short, sunny days froze again during the long nights. But with Treize returning home, and Easter to celebrate, the Khushrenada estate was suffused by a festive, occasionally raucous atmosphere.

Easter had been welcomed with richly coloured eggs, daring sledge races on the frozen river, and a table set in the salon, crammed with dishes that both echoed lent and marked its end: lamb stew, roast rabbit, pelmeni, baked fish, a massive sponge cake filled with thick sweet cream and rose petal marmalade, soup and salad of the first fresh herbs of the year – the tips of young nettles and dandelions.

The old house was filled with the smells and noise of cooking and cleaning. Treize's mother had organised a party – something as predictable as snow in winter, and much in keeping with the traditions the Khushrenadas cherished, or at least observed.

The family – close and extended – arrived in droves, along with assorted friends and carefully selected acquaintances, to share the joy and pride that was displayed without restraint by Madame Khushrenada at the return of her son as a hero. For a few days, the house was swamped with people and noise. Village elders, churchmen, business partners, army brass and relatives filled the festive rooms.

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The Easter celebrations were colourful, rich with food and symbolism, and filled with ancient hopes when the church, patronised by the Khushrenadas for centuries, crowded with village people, guests and family. Under the gaze of dark, gold-shimmering icons, bathed by incence so thick it fogged up the brightly painted, arched ceiling, the priest sang mass, and Zechs watched Treize kneel, bow his head and fold his hands. Treize wore full winter dress uniform – his new one, with the insignia of his new rank prominent on sleeve and shoulder, and the hastily awarded decorations for individual courage and outstanding leadership pinned to the left and right side of his chest. The jacket seemed ill-fitting, too large for his frame, and the cap had been made for European, not Russian winters, leaving his ears bare that had reddened with frost. Zechs thought that Treize had changed during his year away, and if the clothes had been taylored to his old measurements, there would not have been time to adjust them.

Treize had laid his cap on the tiled floor, and his copper hair shimmered in the vague golden light of the church. His eyes were closed, his head bowed, his lips moving in prayer. Zechs did not care for prayers or incense. Although he longed to be closer to Treize, he had chosen a place near the wall of the nave, whilst Treize was next to the aisle. The shadows suited Zechs because he wanted to look without causing a scandal. There had been no time at all to talk back at the house, apart from a brief exchange of words in the library. Unable to control himself, he had welcomed Treize with a broadside of pent-up anger, worry and accusations. They had been sharpened by something else – his maturing body, his physical desires and utter frustration, and the shock at seeing Treize stil unwell.

The congregation was singing in response to the priest, and Zechs could hear Treize's clear, schooled bariton rise freely over the dull mumbling of the crowd. Treize knew every word of the sung prayer as he knew a whole store of folk and modern songs, not to think of the stuff the men at the base liked to holler; he loved singing, and the solemn tune flowed into the smoke-filled, jewel-coloured dusk as if on wings.

Zechs clasped his hands together, and still gazing at Treize, he said his own prayers, a confused, searing worship of fleshly love and the only god he knew.

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With the service over at last, people shuffled out of the glowing dusk of the church into the cold, crisp winter night. There was the shaking of hands, embraces and kisses – left cheek, right, left again – the daubing of crosses of holy water on foreheads, fingers carefully aligned and folded in the prescribed way. Treize bathed in the crowd pressing around the priest, people eager to touch his clothes, the water, the smoke, as if it were the bread and water of life itself. Zechs let himself drift towards the edge of the throng, a strange, dragging sensation in his chest. They were Treize's people, and Treize – the colour high in his cheeks now, his eyes bright, his smile engaging, returned their blessings. He pulled a bag of coins from his coat pocket, small silver pieces Zechs knew the Khushrenadas had minted every year for the high celebrations of their church, and started handing them to the children and old people. The coins had been blessed by the priest, and Zechs was sure most of them would never be used for paying anything but stashed away as keepsakes.

_That's the idea, _Treize had said once, when Zechs asked him why he bothered, _people will keep them, but trust me, when things get rough, they will spend them..._

Zechs turned when he felt a light touch to his elbow. Madame Khushrenada, her head covered in a plain black scarf that contrasted strikingly with her floor-long coat of silverfox, took his hand and squeezed it gently. "I want to light a candle for my husband."

And Zechs, glad about the distraction, offered her his arm to guide her to the bank of waxlights near the altar.

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The night was cold and blue, countless stars glittering in an endless sky. People were moving towards their carriages – some had come in four by fours or motorsledges, others – more traditionally – in troikas with high, painted dugas and bell-studded harness, or in single-horse sleighs with curved horns. Some started to walk home. Zechs, muffled up in mink and cashmere, his blond hair tied into a long loose ponytail down his back, took his troika from one of the grooms from the Khushrenada estate. A beautiful trio of dun Vyatkas2 was hitched to the sleigh. The groom re-buckled the outer reigns of the trotting horses, making their necks curve elegantly, and pulled the thick appliqueed felt blankets off the horses, to stow them in the back of the troika. Zechs grasped the reins and the long, soft leather whip and lightly snicked the animals. He didn't like bells, and the only sounds were the creaking of metal buckles on the harness and the snorting of the horses. He turned the sleigh away from the church, careful to give people time to get out of the way. Ahead he could make out the shimmer of tracks in a field of snow – the road back to the estate, past a long, spaced-out line of ducked wooden houses with carved gables and thick straw roofs. Beyond was only the endless steppe, still covered in snow, and the night in starlit glory. He raised the reins, but before he could smack them down, he heard stomping and puffing. He pulled the horses up, there was a crack and a thump, and he felt the sleigh dip under the impact of something heavy. Looking back, he met Treize's glittering gaze. Treize lay on his back in the pile of furs and blankets in the wickerwoven back of the sleigh; his breath came in thick white clouds, and he clutched the ledge of Zechs' seat with one gloved hand.

"You won't guess," he yapped. He was out of breath, his voice oddly tight.

Zechs shook his head. "You're crazy. What if I'd been gone?" He clicked his tongue, and the horses picked up speed, snow bursting from beneath their unshod hooves. He got the trio into a light trot, the centre horse starting to canter, and behind him light and the din of the crowd began to fade.

Treize pulled himself up with a grunt. "My uncle wanted to show off. He's driving Ann and Dorothy home." With Treize's mist-grey Old Don's3, a present from his mother on his return.

"You lent him your sleigh?"

And then Treize's lips were close to Zechs' cheek; he slung his arms around Zechs' waist, squeezing him tightly. "I did. I would have gone back to the church." His breath was warm and damp, condensing against Zechs' windchilled skin.

"What?" Zechs threw back, disconcerted. The horses broke their stride, the lead animal nervily tossing its head, and they fell from trot and canter into a sharp gallop, foam flying from their mouths. Treize took the reins by covering Zechs' hands with his, and the animals, sensing the calming touch, regained their rhythm. Steam rose from their heated bodies and nostrils, and for a moment Zechs felt surreal, as if thrown into one of the old fairytales Treize loved.

Treize settled next to Zechs and let go, slipping only his right arm around his friend. "I said, I'd have gone back and begged for asylum," he smiled.

"Do you believe in all that? Smoke and prayers?"

"I believe in the future, whatever its name."

The sleigh broke through a thin layer of frost snow and sagged into the powdery drift below before rising again, grinding through firm and soft snow by turns. Treize gasped, clutching at his stomach for a moment, but before Zechs could say anything, Treize leaned against him firmly. "The human soul... isn't that eternity?"

Zechs shot him a glance. "You're weird tonight," he said.

Treize smiled. With his free hand, he reached into the sable coat he wore over his dress uniform. The coat could have bought half a house, Zechs thought as he watched him pull out a flat silver bottle. "Let's drink to that."

Zechs snorted. "Vodka? Your mother will have you spanked for giving me that, and all your decorations won't help you then."

"Only if you tell." Treize pulled the stopper with his teeth, took a deep gulp and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Na sdorovye," he laughed and handed the bottle to Zechs, who took it after a moment of hesitation.

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**Notes:**

1 Ищи́ ве́тра в по́ле. (Ishchi vetra v pole.) - The wind cannot be caught in a net. (Once something is gone, it's lost.)  
2 Vyatkas – tough steppe ponies, used for light field work and to pull troikas  
3 Old Dons – enduring, intelligent and quick steppe horses, formerly cavalry horses


	2. Chapter 2

**Episode 2 – Talk less yet listen more**.1

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Zechs looked around for an empty booth and found one near the entrance. Keying in his code, he watched the message screen pop up. Instant messages travelled on photon beams, but even the speed of light took around five minutes when Earth was close to Mars, enhanced, meta-bundled soundwaves trailing after images, resulting in a strange distortion, crossover-messages and blotting interferences. Most people took time getting used to the patient waiting for the next snippet of dialogue to arrive at their stations when the corresponding images had already skipped ahead.

"Hi," Zechs said to Une's grainy picture.

"Hi," came the distant reply. Even on the small screen she looked tired, but her gaze was hopeful.

"It's okay," he answered the unasked question. "I'll do it."

A slow smile softened her features. "Thank you. I can't remember the last time I took leave."

"Four years ago, one week, getting sunburned on Playa Americana on Tenerife. It took you two weeks to heal, gave you crow's feet, and that guy that broke your heart wasn't worth spitting on."

She laughed. "You checked?"

"Habit." He paused, a mix of reluctance and determination in his gaze. "Ann, there's just one thing-"

"Go home," she cut in lightly. "I don't expect you to bend your schedule. Just let me know when you're ready."

"Thank you. I booked an appointment in a couple of days. Earth days. I didn't know... I mean, it seemed the easiest way to bring it up."

"And how is the tracking record?"

"There aren't many places to go where we are."

"You are going to tell me that the jailer is no better off than the jailed."

"Something like that."

"You've never been good at idling. You tend to get bored and morose. Oh, Lucrezia sends you regards."

"It's not working, Ann. And I know that your brief includes keeping tabs on me."

She raised her hands, palms out. "Okay, I never said it didn't. But it's a pity. In any case," she reached out in slow-motion to adjust the camera, which made her image wobble and the sound scratch, "I want this holiday because I have an invitation." She sat back, and when the grainy transmission had cleared up, he could see that she was smiling again. "I'm not expecting the world to change, but it's worth trying."

"Is he nice?"

"And smart. And civilian. An artist; he paints, had a few small exhibitions on Earth, quite local."

"Local?"

"From Pavlodar." Close to the estate of Une's family, bordering on that of the Khushrenadas, no more than a few hours by train and jeep, even less by plane. A small silence followed, before Une shifted on her seat. "I've learned. I'm going to try harder this time."

Zechs cleared his throat. "They always try to take advantage of you."

"There's nothing to gain for him. No promotion, no money. We agreed to keep our things separate."

"If you keep stuff separate, how can you share your lives?"

His tone held a lashing of bitterness, and her smile faded. Reluctantly, she said, "I really want it to work."

He shook his head. "You have a picture?"

As if she had expected the question, she reached inside her uniform jacket and pulled out a small, black plastic wallet. She opened it and held it up. It contained two pictures: one Zechs recognised as an old-fashioned stock photo of the command staff of the Tallgeese project – himself, Une, Noin, Otto as the chief engineer, and Treize, all in black mechanic's overalls, posing uncomfortably in the palm of Tallgeese's giant claw. Zechs knew that the picture had been taken via autotrigger with Treize's mobile phone camera, in the aftermath of the Lake Victoria disaster, and that it had been used in a press release to the public. An in-your-face gesture, typical for Treize, in between directing the clearing-up operation and preparing the mass burial of staff killed by the Gundam bombing.

_What a terrible day... how can she carry this picture around? I thought I was watching myself losing it... You dragged me out of the school's ruins where I was trying to get a tune out of the broken piano, and then you told me you needed me to go home to see your dying mother because you had no time... _

Zechs willed the memory to subside before it could overwhelm him. The other image showed the semiprofile of a youthful man, with a wide, frank smile, blue eyes and short brown hair. He was glancing over his shoulder, giving the impression of a snapshot, with a splotched canvas behind him, but Zechs thought that it felt too perfect, as if staged to look casual. On the man's cheek were a dimple and a few spatters of skyblue paint. In spite of obvious differences, Zechs was struck by the similarities. It made him feel ill.

Une put the wallet away. "It's strange," she said quietly, "how appearances can mislead."

Zechs drew a quick, deep breath, surprising himself by thinking that perhaps she deserved a break. He decided to reserve judgement although he'd always been right, and thought he'd be right this time. "Sure," he said. "Don't worry. I hope it'll work out."

"Thanks. How is your friend?"

He shrugged. "We broke up. It wasn't much anyway, just a few... I mean, we met a few times after that welcome disco for the new crew, that's all. It's okay. I don't want more than that. It's too cold up here to screw around."

"I thought he would have been a good match. Tough, smart, a good age..."

"I don't need matching up."

"I only meant that... with someone younger, perhaps it would help you become..." She blushed, looking for the right words – not the ones he could all but hear hopping around in her mind.

"Mature," he suggested, a twang of sarcasm in his tone. "Perhaps. But I've got no nerve to play the mentor." He waited for the obvious comeback, ready and primed to rebuke it.

He thought that he should have known better. For a moment, Une looked concerned, but then she met his gaze calmly. "It's hard to measure up to a dead hero. I thought that guy was really in love with you. Nice, and patient."

"Too patient. It's tacky and boring." Zechs folded his arms, closing his stance. "And they all are like that until they get to know me."

She shook her head, and he thought he saw a shimmer of regret in her eyes, but her voice was level when she said, "I think our slot will close in a moment."

He rose. "I'll clock in as agreed. Go book your leave."

He caught her grateful smile before the screen blacked out.

Someone had pinned a map of the Northern sky on the booth's partition, a stark contrast to the thick, dirty-orange drift of sands that skittered against the walls of the station as Zechs wandered back to his quarters. Soon he would be leaving Mars behind, and he tried to imagine the sky in spring, as it had been when Treize had returned.

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**Interlude 2 – Easter Bells**

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Back at the estate, the celebrations continued until most of the guests had left, although a family affair with the Khushrenadas still meant a full house and a black-tie affair. Treize's aunts, uncles, cousins; a number of 'close friends' with their pretty daughters, his grandmother and, once the meal was almost finished, the personnel – the stable hands, the women who worked in the kitchen and washed the laundry, the house teacher and even the forester that for most of the year lived in the dacha in the woods that surrounded the old house.

In all, it was rather trying, Zechs thought. He felt intruded upon and stared at. Most of all, it irritated him that there was not a moment's peace for him to be close to Treize. Madame involved him, presenting him with the same pride as Treize, but Zechs found it hard to keep his decorum. He was not interested in the girls that tried to flirt with him, and he found the drunken older men tiresome with their bragging and posturing. He withdrew into himself, talking only when asked, and watching instead.

When it was all over at last, the house fell silent again, the clear, melodious echo of churchbells from the the beyond the river and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the vestibule the only sound in the muffled, snowbound greyness of the morning. In the small fireplace in Treize's room glowed ash-covered birch logs. Outside, it was snowing as if spring had gone to sleep again.

Treize took off his fanciful uniform jacket and untucked his shirt. He loosened his cummerbund, draped the clothes over the headboard, and settled cautiously on his bed, after shoving back the bulging down covers. Zechs sat down on the edge of the mattress.

Treize smiled at him. "It doesn't feel like spring now, does it?" A small pause, then, "I love you."

Zechs studied him, a small frown between his thin, almost white brows. "I don't get it. What are you seeing in me?"

Treize gently stroked his thigh. "You look sweet in your night gear." That was an old-fashioned, calf-long garment of soft white cotton, the cut resembling a smock, but with fine red embroidery along the cuffs and neckline. A present, hand-made by Treize's grandmother in hours of painstaking cross-stitch no larger than needlepoint. Aged thirteen, Zechs had been embarrassed by it, but – unable to refuse without causing serious upset – he had found it surprisingly comfortable, and it had become a favourite.

"When you were little," Treize said, "you had one with little airplanes and moonrockets printed on it."

Zechs blushed. "So?" It had been the one he'd worn under his dressing gown when Treize's father had seized and whisked him away from the murderous fall of Cinq, to the safety of the estate, putting worlds between his past and his new life. Zechs the child, uprooted and replanted in alien soil, had refused to give up the pyjamas until he'd outgrown them, and then he'd kept the threadbare two-piece neatly folded at the bottom of his wardrobe. It was still there.

Studying him, Treize smiled. "What?"

Zechs leaned forward, bracing himself by clutching the pillows to either side of Treize's shoulders. "You know what."

Treize's hand rose to stroke up Zechs' arm. "Beauty. Innocence."

"I am NOT innocent."

Treize's eyes narrowed with his smile, their slant becoming stronger even as a dimple appeared on his cheek. "Well," Treize said slowly, "I didn't mean _that_."

Like this, Zechs thought, he resembled his mother more than his father, who'd given him blue eyes and pale skin, but Treize's copper hair was the result of an even match of genes – the wheatblond of his father and the black of his mother – and his features had the high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes of her tribe, her thin-lipped mouth under a long, narrow nose.

"Good." Zechs edged into the bed. "Move."

Treize shifted. Zechs turned onto his side and before Treize could catch him he brushed back Treize's shirt. For a few moments, they were both silent while Zechs traced scars and gauze pads fixed to Treize's stomach and flank. One of them oozed reddish fluid.

"What did really happen up there?" Zechs asked, his voice sullen.

Treize combed slowly through Zechs' hair. "I missed you. I missed home. The smell of earth. The forest. My family. Everything that's here."

"You never called." Zechs trailed his fingers over the edge of a pad, the soft material encrusted with seepage. "Just quit the bull and talk to me."

"I got hurt."

"That's not what the news said."

Treize made no reply.

"We watched the news," Zechs went on stubbornly. "That kid shot you down."

"Propaganda," Treize said quietly. "Can't you see?"

Zechs stared at him. Treize held his gaze for a moment before breaking the tension with a smile. It was not returned, and faded. He cleared his throat. "After the space mission was over, we touched down. Our brief was to rendezvous with the rest of our garrison up there, assess the situation on the ground, radio for supplies. I took a blast of shrapnel when that home-made bomb went off almost under our noses. A pipe bomb, on the roadside, and they said I was lucky it missed my vitals. The body armour held, but my driver died in the car. The jeeps are supposed to be armoured. I always said that the floorplate-"

"You're still unwell."

"I should..." Treize shook his head. "By regulation, I should have checked his stuff. He wasn't wearing the right gear."

"Didn't he know the regs? Then how is it your fault? Why are you still sick?" Zechs threw at him, staccato-like. He was getting agitated and drifting fast towards the edge of his patience.

"There were complications," Treize said, barely missing a beat, his tone sharpening. Rehearsed, Zechs thought, as if he'd heard it all before and anticipated the question. His voice clear and detached, as if he'd explained the same thing countless times already. "They didn't have medication, or the right kit. The hospital was bombed out. They cut me out of my uniform and tried to fix me in a basement room packed with refugees, until the worst was over." He fell silent for a moment, before saying, "It doesn't fit with us being in control up there, does it?"

"Do I care? Dammit, Tre, one goddamn year!" Zechs burst out.

"I didn't know whether I'd live!" Treize snapped, getting loud at last. "What the hell would I have told you?"

"The truth! What really happened up on that scrapheap!"

"I can't!" Treize broke out. "Just stop it! Stop questioning me, stop asking, just stop!" There was a brief, panting silence, before he added roughly, "I cannot talk about it because it's classified. That's the truth."

Zechs swallowed hard, his anger draining away. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "I-"

"You couldn't know." Treize cut in brusquely.

Zechs rolled onto his back, folded his arms under his head and stared up at the ceiling. "I should have thought of it." The red flush was fading from his face and neck that were damp with sweat. He was still radiating discontent, but Treize had deflected it, leaving him seething yet aimless and deeply dissatisfied.

Treize closed his eyes and listened to his breathing. "I was scared," he said. "And I wanted to go home. I needed to tell you... Do you have any idea..."

Zechs turned towards him and wrapped his arm around Treize's waist. Treize turned his head so he could meet his gaze, then he closed his eyes.

"Tre, why are you crying?"

"I'm not."

There was a long silence, before Zechs whispered, "What?"

"I love you," came the quiet, prompt reply. "I hadn't told you yet, and I needed you to know. It was what kept me alive."

And suddenly Zechs understood why Treize hadn't been in touch.

xxx

**Notes:**

1 Больше слушай, меньше говори. Be swift to hear, slow to speak. Literal: Listen more, talk less.


	3. Chapter 3

**Episode 3 – The tears of strangers are only water.**

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Zechs had kept his appointment with the project shrink and her assistant, and he'd managed to catch the assistant alone to talk about his trip to Earth. She'd been cool and patient, which annoyed him, but when he left, they both knew he'd have things his way - a matter of time and formalities, no more. It filled him with an unkind satisfaction to see frustration flare behind her carefully kept facade. Yet the moment he left her office, he put it out of his mind and delved back into his work.

Now he was counting the hours, the minutes, every breath while packing his backpack. His scheduled leave was due, and boarding for the spaceliner would start soon. He was keen to leave the confines of the project, the stale air and brackish water, the endless days of sand and drudgery. He longed to stretch his legs and let his mind drift – up here, he could do neither.

The project living quarters consisted of airtight modules of circular, staggered tiers of pod-like cabins, shelves and beds moulded in fibreglass, enforced concrete and opaque grey plastic. In the central module was a communal bathroom with shower stalls and toilets and a separate unit for the women; and a canteen with rows of benches and tables. Everything had a temporary feel, but Zechs knew that it years had passed since the last new pod had been docked onto the structure. Supplies arrived in regular but long intervals, and the terraforming crew had been economical in using spares to replace worn equipment or building new structures. The enclosed, cramped spaces smelled of sweat, unclean clothes and stale food, and a fine film of orange-red dust covered almost every surface because everything was recycled, even the air filters.

_Going home in summer... what a difference. What did we do in summer, Tre? Go fishing, fool around in the river, ride naked across the meadows into the forest, and then... I never thought a horse could have such a hard spine. My backside hurt so much, I could hardly sit for days afterwards, and the inside of my knees was chafed... And I was scratched all over from those cursed brambles. I was waiting for some sort of innuendo – if only to blow up at you – but you were sly and kept quiet... _

He smiled as he stuffed his personal logbook – the outmoded, paperback kind – into the pack, along with a few rationbars. Rations on Mars came in sealed containers and resembled military meals-ready-to-eat; water was recycled and bottled, and Zechs didn't want to think about how many times it had passed through everyone on station before. The shower stalls were sealed pods that spewed pressurised water from jacuzzi-like nozzles, and a jetstream sucked it down the drain immediately. Only centrally issued, perfume-free soap was allowed, to enable complete recycling. Toilets made a roaring noise when engaged, like the open ones on an old train, because they operated on suction, drawing waste into the recycling system, where it was processed into fertile sludge for the greenhouses.

There, on large ponds of nutrient-saturated water, grew slimy layers of green algae, the first successful attempt at growing green plants on Mars. They didn't look like much, and they stank, but Zechs knew that the biologists working on the experiment were immensely proud of this, aiming to create a critical mass of plants so they could reduce the input of heat. Meanwhile, they were also busy turning that unappealing mass into something edible for the crew, who were remarkably unenthusiastic about green soup and stewed off-green protein cubes that had a whiff of foul pondwater.

_So unlike the river – cold, brown, full of fishes hiding in the reeds near the muddy banks. Have I ever gone home in summer before? It used to be Christmas, but the schedules didn't work out this time. We'll have corn apples now. Waxy green, juicy, and terribly sour. I never got used to them, but you were picking them off those crappy old trees behind the yard and eat them like that, warm from the sun, bugs and all. And then you'd slobber all over me. I liked poking clumps of dried sap from the broken bark and chew them. It tasted bittersweet, it was gooey in my mouth, and you'd tease me about it... sly, dirty little jokes that made me crazy with want..._

Zechs ducked to step into his cabin on the bottom tier and pulled the sliding door shut. The blind on the large window opposite the door was raised, and the reddish, diffuse light of Mars shone through the thick double plastic of the pod's shell. Long, almost vertical trails of swirling sand moved over the horizon like ghosts, the next duststorm in the making.

_At least we've got a view when it's clear. Olympus Mons soaring from the frozen plains – how could anyone see a semblance to Earth in this world? The longer we're here, the more alien it becomes, no matter how much we build and form. We don't belong here._

He thought the tattered, faded newspaper spread someone had cello-taped onto the wall in the mess room was a wry joke – it showed in ugly bleachblue hues a vision of Mars from a sci-fi phantasy, with glossy skyscrapers and lush greenery in glasshouses, smiling, healthy looking, busty models dressed up in skin-tight 'space-suits' made of silvery plastic, and no duststorm in sight. Someone had scrawled a dirty joke across the chest of one of the models, in fat black print, and 'enhanced' her physical features with coarse lines. The psychiatrist complained on her second day on the base about this and the constant innuendo from the men. Zechs shrugged, and when she harangued him about regulations, he told her she could go back home. They had wanted another medical doctor, he said, not a shrink. She should look at the bright side – hadn't she been posted to the project because of an affair with her boss? Well, nobody was going to mind that either, not on Mars.

She had called him a sanctimonious bastard and threatened to complain. He laughed at her, glad that Zero didn't bother rising in his mind. She couldn't reach him. Nobody could. He was alone, the system his shadow.

xxx

He changed into a black Preventer-issue tracksuit. The shield embroidered on the left of his chest had long faded in the harsh light. The thin Mars atmosphere hardly blocked any UV radiation, and the transparent parts of the pod-shells didn't keep it all out either. Time out in those areas – the greenhouses and solar collectors – was restricted, but regulations were not always enforced, and people got tired of them. Some of the men were deeply tanned because they used the collectors as sunbeds, going as far as spreading towels on the rubber matting that covered the gangways between the shiny arrays.

To make best use of the available space and to allow some light into the pods, the arrays covering the top floor of each pod were arranged in tiers and canted at an angle, giving the impression of giant scales. The men would climb up on the strutting and hide between the scales. Smearing themselves with sunlotion – issued as a standard item – and using judiciously extended canvas sails for shade, they would spend time 'in the rafters', naked, drinking and playing cards. The psychiatrist had once ventured up there on a dare; she received such a raucous welcome that she preferred to stay clear in future. When she demanded Zechs stop the practice, Zechs told her that it wasn't his job to mother anyone. He had judged, correctly, that no amount of complaints and paperwork filed on Earth would be able to touch the project – it took too long, such things would be hushed up because the interests behind the exploration of Mars were bigger than concerns over safety and propriety, and career-soldiers bent on enforcing rules did not last so far from home.

_You were good at that sort of stuff, Tre. And I've learned. Here, it's us against the rest of the universe. The misfits, the guys who've got problems with rules and orders, the ones that have files marked for insubordination and worse. _

And in the scale of things, he thought, it didn't matter whether someone caught a nasty sunburn or shortened his lifespan by a few years. Mars, for most of them, was a no-return posting, a dead end for uncomfortable characters. At the beginning of his posting, the Mars crew had reminded Zechs of Otto and his team. They were smart, hard-working, unruly, independent, unwilling to accept authority without questioning. Most of them were on the terraforming project because Earth had to room for them.

_We've become like the colonists on their Lagrange perches. Stuck in no-man's land._

Zechs hit the on-button of his personal computer terminal in passing, and switched on the tiny, sealed-flask coffeemachine wedged into a niche by his cot. The faint smell of fresh coffee began to fill the room as he settled on the high-edged bed, the wireless keyboard on his lap, and called the communication channel to the sickbay.

The sandy picture of a brunette woman with a plain ponytail flickered onto the screen. Her expression was blank, her gaze frosty. "Yes?"

"I am going on leave in-" he checked his wristwatch - "thirtyfour hours."

There was a tiny break, a giveaway moment, before she quickly said, "I haven't got security clearance yet."

"I'll take care of that."

She stared at him. "I don't want this."

"Come on. I'm supposed to watch over you; I can't do that when I'm down there and you're stuck here. Your clearance should arrive any minute."

"I'm not going _there_. Not with you."

"Whatever." He set the keyboard aside and went to pour his coffee into a lidded mug with a drinking spout "Your choice is to be dumped at Preventers HQ," he said, sitting down again, "where you'll be kept in the holding tank until I get back, or come to the estate with me."

She stood up. "Screw you."

He saluted with the mug. "Marimaia, you're not my type."

xxx

**Interlude 3 – Market Week**

xxx

In the distance, the whine of a jet engine rose and faded. Zechs glanced at Treize, whose chest was moving slowly in the rhythm of his breathing. Zechs leaned over him to gaze at his face, watching his eyelids. They were still, without flutter or tremble. For a split moment, his heart skipped and he panicked, putting his ear to Treize's chest and his fingers across Treize's lips. Soothed when he heard Treize's heartbeat, felt his breathing, only the aftershocks of his fear trembling through him.

Zechs rose as quietly as he could, and left the room to find out what was happening. Treize turned and hugged the pillow close to his stomach. He breathed in deeply, soaking up Zechs' clean, sharp scent.

xxx

The general stayed on after friends and families had left, and with him Ann and Dorothy, both looking fresh and lovely. Encouraged by Madame, they kept close company with Treize, bracketing him, feeding him, teasing him. A few times, Dorothy tried to draw Zechs into their small group, but he stayed awkward and reluctant in a calculated way, and she gave up, regret in her pretty eyes.

Those eyes reminded him too much of Treize, and it did not help his frame of mind that she seemed to see right through him.

Xxx

The morning was unusually quiet. Zechs picked his way through the debris of the party. The servants were about, clearing fireplaces and stacking fresh wood, cleaning dirty dishes, and preparing gallons of tea and coffee for breakfast. They were chatting, not too concerned about being heard – the guests were not likely to wake up early.

Outside, the sky was pale blue, and the sun shone, its light without warmth. The air was moist, thick with the smells of damp earth and melting snow, and the icicles hanging from the eaves of the house were weeping.

Zechs was putting the saddle on one of the small, hardy horses that the Khushrenadas kept for work in the forest or on the fields of the estate, when Dorothy caught up with him. She was wearing a skintight black top with a deep neckline, and jeans that seemed to be painted onto her backside. Zechs kept his eyes firmly on the horse as he buckled the saddle belt up.

"You seem pissed off," Dorothy said.

Oddly put out by her crudeness, he shrugged. "I'm fine. You?"

"Want me to ride with you?" Her tone had an undercurrent, and her posture shifted a little, pushing out her chest and accentuating the curve of her hip.

Zechs shook his head. "I'm going for a spin, just checking..."

"Checking?" She pushed herself off the doorpost and leaned against the horse, looking at Zechs across its back. "I could help you."

Before he could react, she grabbed his head with both hands and kissed him deeply. Her breasts pushed up against the saddle, and Zechs could smell her perfume – a heavy scent, mingled with warm sweat and desire. It made him dizzy.

He was breathless when she let go, and he could not help but stare when she winked and left, hips swaying. He was angry and didn't know why, but putting his energy into a wild ride through forest and across the steppe seemed a good idea.

xxx

When he returned to the house late that afternoon, his hair was in a mess, sweaty strands coiling against his temples and neck, and he felt sticky and in need of a bath.

Treize was sitting outside, a blanket across his knees, a book on his lap. Next to him stood Ann, one hand on his shoulder. Dorothy, her arm wrapped around Ann's waist, was leaning over Treize, her face almost cheek to cheek with his. She was combing her fingers through Treize's hair. They were laughing at something, a joke or a few funny lines in the book perhaps, Zechs thought. On Treize's face lay a smile that brightened when he glanced up and saw Zechs. "How was it?"

"Did you have a good _ride_?" Dorothy threw in.

Zechs pushed his riding gloves into his belt. "Could have been better. And yours?"

Dorothy opened her mouth, but Treize was quicker. "I'm not well enough yet," he said firmly.

Zechs shrugged. "Tough, isn't it? Good job you're getting time to rest." He stomped past, and the panes of the French doors shivered as he slammed them shut.

"Oooh." Dorothy rolled her eyes and fluttered her eyelashes.

Ann, looking tense and nervous, bit her lip. Treize sighed and closed the book. "If you'll excuse me."

"We'll try," Dorothy quipped, "but only because you're having domestic issues."

"I have not."

"Sure you do. Go already and calm your girlfriend down."

Treize's cheeks coloured. "Don't call him that."

"He's a drama queen," Dorothy prodded. "And his hair is almost as long as mine."

"He's just worried," Ann said, drawing back to give Treize room to get up.

"He tastes good." Dorothy shook her head, her lips brushing over Treize's cheekbone. "But he's a miserable kisser. Perhaps he needs practice, or a decent teacher. I'd volunteer. What do you think, cousin? Perhaps if you have a word with him..."

The pink blush bloomed up to Treize's hairline, fanning out over his neck as he tensed.

"Dorothy." Ann gripped her friend's hand firmly. "Let's look at the falcons. I've wanted to see them since we got here, and there hasn't been a chance yet."

Straightening unwillingly, Dorothy shrugged. "If you must. I think they're boring. Why're you wasting your time with _birds_, Treize?"

"I like them," Ann cut in before Treize could reply. "And I'll come to the stables with you afterwards. You can try teaching me how to ride. You promised, remember?"

Dorothy snorted. "It's easy. And after that, I'll give you a fencing lesson. Say, cousin, have you shown him how to use his blade yet? Or does he keep it in his sheath all the time?"

Treize folded the blanket, then placed it on the chair, the closed book on top. "My uncle should sheathe your sharp tongue," he said, his tone controlled but his eyes angry and his face deep red, "who could keep up with that? I feel sorry for the old man, and for whoever's going to marry you."

"Phew, that was cheap," Dorothy returned, not looking cross at all. "But you know what they say – still waters run deep."1

"Whatever." Treize turned his back on her. "Go sparring elsewhere. Or perhaps a swim in the river would cool you off. I could arrange that." He didn't look back as they watched him cross the room and disappear into the dusky depths of the house.

"Wrong tactic," Ann said dryly, letting go of Dorothy's wrist. "Did you have to spoil it?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

Dorothy shrugged. "He's cute, but I can't stand him."

"Milliardo?"

"He's such a girl," Dorothy laughed, "he got shaky when I kissed him, and he looked completely spooked. But he feels good, and he smelled like cookies. Sweet. I couldn't help it."

"I don't know..."

"...who you'd like better, Treize or Milli?"

Annoyed, Ann shook her head. "I think you've got Milliardo wrong."

"He'll get over it. Perhaps they'll console each other. I wouldn't mind watching."

A pained expression crossed Ann's features. "I'd rather look at the falcons now."

"Treize's birds." Dorothy hooked her arm into Ann's. "Perhaps the only ones he'll ever have. Let's go and look at our competition then."

xxx

**Notes:**

1 Still waters run deep. – В тихом омуте черти водятся.


	4. Chapter 4

**Episode 4 – A soft bed, yet hard to sleep on1**

xxx

The Academy had no more than two dozen students at any time. They were taught by the specialists among the permanent crew, and most of them were future star soldiers of the new Earth Sphere military. There were no colonists in their ranks because they always failed the entrance tests, but Zechs knew that the exams were geared towards weeding out those the top brass deemed unsuitable. That Maxwell had passed the exams meant nothing – Zechs knew that he would stay stuck with the Preventers anyway.

An Academy term lasted two years, without leave. Lectures alternated with field work, and that meant students joined the working crews on shift. Zechs thought that the regimen always made people show their true colours. Some would protest. Others would trudge along. The best would engage, move things on, looking for change and improvement. On leaving, their records would carry formal recommendations that would shape their future. Graduation, some would realise, was not guaranteed, irrespective of their background.

Zechs had been surprised to find that he had been given the final veto – by Une, who had suppressed any protestations against granting him such influence, by whatever means she saw fit to use. To top command, she had sold it as the perfect way of utilising his experience whilst keeping him conveniently under control and out of sight. This had left him in a position of considerable power, and he didn't mind at all. On Mars he was King.

Zechs leaned back against the pillow in his back and stretched his barefoot legs out on the cot. He drank some coffee from the mug – a lidded affair with straw, reminding him of the cups in the hospital where he'd recovered after his crash to Earth – and opened a magazine on the latest terraforming machinery.

_This stuff looks like what it is – Gundams in disguise. I remember that parade you took after getting back from L3. You had stepped off that transport ship just the day before; we didn't even know you were back. And then we saw you on the news. The full hog, pomp and circumstance, and you looked like death in boots. But Catalonia had made sure they pinned your new stripes on you in no time so you could pose as his adjutant, dressed up in all your finery. You told me later that your fast-track promotion had not even been rubberstamped yet, but that they'd received you with a gun-salute when you arrived at the spaceport. Old Catalonia the kingmaker. He made you a hero, and you made my sister a queen... and me, in a way._

It was an odd, wry afterthought. Listening into the silence of his room, he wasn't sure whether he should feel pain. The noise of the base was dampened to the faint hum of life support systems, and the vibrations of the mining and drilling machinery outside, transmitted by the frozen ground. He felt numb and half-relieved because there was no Zero buzz in his brain. Closing his eyes, he wriggled his cold toes in an attempt to get circulation going, and cautiously let himself drift into his memories.

_I only clocked much later, when I had become a part of it all, that those monsters that rolled past the crowd weren't large tanks but Gundams. Flat on their backs, freshly painted and decorated with bunting and flowers like giant kid's toys, they almost looked funny. You had worked it out with the old man, it was your idea, the substitution of the Gundams for the tank squadron, and you must have been in touch with Catalonia long before you touched down on Earth. That's why you got your promotion, not because of L3. He put you in charge, that's how he made sure you'd stay, whatever doubts you might have had up on L3. Perhaps it was a trade-off between you two. He'd just given you what you'd been craving all along – your own project, classified and special. The rank and power to deal with it. When I got to talk to you at last, I'd just been accepted for the Lake Victoria Base, and you'd become one of the instructors' corps, a convenient front. By then, it was all too late..._

xxx

The week-long journey on the space liner passed without incident. The liner was operated like a navy ship on Earth, without frills and only the most basic adjustments for non-military passengers. It was, he thought as he stepped through the airlock, like everything to do with the Mars project. Cramped decks, corridors lined with creaking antislip-grids and garlanded with tubing, bundles of cables and pipelines, the smell of fresh battlegrey paint wafting through the airconditioning grilles. A barely civilian operation, run by demobbed military personnel, under Preventers command. It agreed with his own position, and he didn't mind.

The returning crew increased their routine fitness programme in a pressured studio that simulated increasing gravity, and started their prescribed medical tests. Apart from that, they had nothing to do, but Zechs took the boredom as luxury. There was no alcohol on board, and entertainment was limited to a pile of saucy magazines, a handful of out-of-date films on holodisks, and a well-thumbed manual on how to use the fickle holoplayer. Zechs spent his spare time in the passenger lounge, playing cards with a few of the other men going home on leave. They were trading jokes and insults and betting money, and he was enjoying the simplicity of it. Marimaia joined them only for the communal meals – three MREs per day, plus nutritional shakes, heated in the automated pantry's microwave – and sat watching the floor-to-ceiling screen transmitting a view of space. She hardly spoke, and he didn't care enough to ask what she was thinking.

xxx

Baikonur was a blast of burning, yellow dust and more boredom. The clima control in the plain, hangar-like reception hall of the cosmodrome had broken down, and the few staff had thrown dress code and regulations overboard in favour of t-shirts. Unshaven, sweaty, they smoked and swore, their language guttural and thickly accented. When the shuttle touched down, they flared into action, working with flawless efficiency, belying the scruffy appearance of the place. The moment the flurry of arrival was over, they lapsed back into langour. Zechs feel sticky and smelly with sweat. Marimaia clung to her single bag of luggage that contained a few clothes and some toiletries. Zechs dealt with the check-in – they both had false passports, issued by Une, that the staff ran through the scanner before he and Marimaia stepped through the bodyscanners that clocked both their identities and physiologial data for the final medical checkup. Nobody asked any questions, as if neither the Preventer chip implanted in his neck nor Marimaia's tracker existed. Zechs wondered how Une had done it – perhaps some trusted staff were masquerading as border control to handle this, or she had created perfect shadow identities for him and the girl. Sometimes she reminded him of Treize in her determination to have things her way.

_You told me once that she'd have been your type, if you'd been after a woman... I could see it, that first Easter you spent back home after the L3 affair. I could see that you liked her a lot, and it hurt like hell because I could also see why. She was smart in this quiet way that looked almost timid until there was a need for action. She even managed to rein Dorothy in..._

In spite of the rigorous physical programme on Mars and the shuttle, he felt weak under the weight of Earth's atmosphere, the glimmering air of the cosmodrome, the mirages that layered the yellow-white horizon. He had never liked spaceports, and Baikonur looked like a scorched wound in the desert. Yet only a few days later he was issued permission to fly home, and his jet waited, flight-ready, on the small airfield beyond the spaceport and the staff barracks.

It wasn't a long trip, but he was exhausted when he touched down on the airstrip on the estate. Marimaia was pale when she unclipped her seatbelt. "I hate flying," she said, ignoring his hand, stretched out unthinkingly, when she climbed out of the plane.

xxx

The stink of aviation fuel mixed with the smell of scorched soil and the resinous aroma of the forest sweating in the summer heat. The small crew greeted Zechs with handshakes and shoulder-slaps, along with a few gruff jokes about female company. It was a level of familiarity that had crept in over the years, and he didn't mind – they were no longer enlisted, there was no need to stand on hierarchy. Yet he knew that he would never be able to work this like Treize had, commanding distance and closeness in perfect balance.

He gave them an envelope. "For drinks." He knew that on their days off they would go to the village to get drunk. Habits were strict in this part of the world, but some of them had wives and children that they would visit. It all felt oddly settled.

xxx

The jeep rumbled along the deeply rutted track from the airstrip. The earth was dark and cinderdry, with a few cracked, dark patches where dampness had gathered in deep potholes. In spring the jeep would sink into kneedeep mud, reshaping the road by gauging fresh tracks into the ground.

Cobwebs glittered on the trees and on the summery meadows beyond. The scent of the blooming roses and the honeyed aroma of freshly mown hay mingled with the bittersweet aroma of the forest, and as they emerged from its sunspeckled dusk, the endless, pale blue of the summery sky suffused them with its dreamlike light.

Zechs parked the jeep by the front entrance. He unlocked with an old-fashioned key, stepped in and slung his backpack onto the floor. Inside it was cool and smelled of dust and mice. He sat down on the floor and started unlacing his boots.

Marimaia closed the door and looked around the vast, empty vestibule. "Where do you want me to shack up?" she asked, sullen and tired. Her face was flushed, an unhealthy reddish hue, and her hair stuck in sweaty strands to her temples.

Zechs tugged one boot off and shrugged. "Wherever. Plenty of rooms upstairs, all empty."

She stayed put, clutching her duffel bag. Deep silence suffused the house, and dust shimmered in the vague light. "This place is dead."

Zechs pulled off the other boot and shoved them both in a corner by the door. "I like it."

"Because you're a zombie." She stepped past him at last and went up the wide staircase, its sanded wood carefully oiled but bare, showing the fine beechwood grain. The heels of her sturdy walking boots made a hollow sound with each step.

When he heard a door clap at the end of the upstairs corridor, Zechs leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. The smells of fresh paint and damp mortar mingled with those of old wood and dust, and he thought that no matter how much the house was scrubbed and cleaned, there would always be this mix of old and new.

_So why bother? Why the hell do I bother?_

xxx

Zechs played the recording from the holodisk Une had given him – he had lost count how many times he had done so on Mars, locked into his pod, the blinds drawn tight. Sliding the holographic disc into the player and waiting for the images to form, shaped from light and air, yet so lifelike that he longed for sound, as if it could spark them into reality.

This time though he was at home, in the place where Treize had lived and breathed, and he was listening to an antique vinyl disc – songs and tunes he knew because Treize had spent nights at his bedside, and later in his bed, singing away nightmares of Cinq. Songs perhaps inherited from his father, of nightingales and soldiers2 and black ravens, of a girl and apple blossoms and the steppe eagle soaring high above a river. And when he'd run out of songs, there would be fairytales, a bottomless treasure of heroes and magical beings, princesses and cruel kings...

_Finist, my falcon, I will wait for you. Forever and beyond, until eternity is over and we walk in silence among the stars... You said that, and I memorised it, making you repeat it countless times, in the evening before you'd kiss me goodnight. It sounds ridiculously pompous now; it didn't then. Should I have thought it strange that you would kiss me first on my forehead, then on my eyes, and later on my lips? You tasted bitter, of homegrown tobacco you'd steal from the stablehand's garden patch and smoke in secret. The stink clung to your hair, and your mother would give you the whip when she caught you before you could wash it. All that for a fag, you said once when I discovered the stripes on your back. You were smiling at me, and I didn't get it, not then. I just wanted you to be close, holding me fast. Everything would be well when you held me, but it's no good to be sentimental, is it now? Sentimentality suited you, but it doesn't sit right with me._

The hologram started with a recording from a family party – Treize's return from L3, after more than a year without any official news. _And then you were back with a bang, l__ike jack-out-of-the-box,_ Zechs thought as he settled on the sofa in the former, now empty library, _as if some magician had snapped his fingers. Abracadabra._

The record player scratched over the disc. Zechs settled the remote for the holo-player in his lap and regarded the label of the bottle he had brought from the walk-in larder. Five-star vodka, cold but not frosted. He hesitated – he had not touched alcohol in months; it was not allowed on Mars, and the occasional, smuggled bottle was traded at prices that he found too ridiculous to pay. He had felt reassured by the fact that he was still able to refuse.

He cracked the bottle open and set it down between his feet, then hit the play button.

xxx

**Interlude 4 – At a Cost**

xxx

Zechs' room was cold, the window wide open, the white muslin sheers drawn back and swaying gently in the breeze. Quietly, Treize stepped in and closed the door behind him. Zechs lay on the bed, on his stomach. His clothes were strewn about the floor, one black sock on the bedpost. He was hugging the pillow to his chest, his hair messy around his shoulders, a white sheet pulled up to his waist. He didn't stir.

Treize held his breath, then forced himself to relax when the scars on his belly and flank began to pull his flesh. A heartbeat of hesitation, then he crossed the room and sat down next to Zechs' face. Zechs' eyes were closed, his breathing rippling through him in long, even waves.

Treize raised his hand and – barely touching – traced the contours of firm shoulders and the sweep of Zechs' spine, pausing, then moving away from the valley between his buttocks; following the line of his flank and up over his biceps to his cheek.

"I am not sleeping," Zechs murmured, his voice a scratchy rumble because it had broken but not settled yet.

Treize leaned in, held a few strands of silverblond back, and kissed his jaw. "You looked so... pure."

"I'm not."

Treize stroked Zechs' hair. "Can't I have this illusion?"

Zechs tensed and rolled onto his side, exposing his broadening chest and firm stomach, where a fine trail of darker blond had begun to shadow the line from his navel to his groin. "Won't you come in?" he whispered hoarsely.

There was so much longing in his eyes; Treize refused to think about it, and crawled under the blanket to join him. They shuffled around a bit, Zechs supporting Treize with a strength that Treize found surprising, until they were comfortable.

"I'm not that fragile," Treize said quietly.

Zechs stared at him; their faces so close their eyes merged into one. "You could have fooled me. All of us. What kind of illusion was that then?"

Treize drew him closer still until he could bury his face in Zechs' hair. "Milliardo," he murmured, "Miliusha. Milushka moy. Ya tebya lyublyu. Po svyegda. Da pabyeda."

"Victory?" Zechs clutched at Treize's wrists, sliding down and linking their fingers. "I'm not a battle you must win."

"Yes, I must win you," Treize returned. "And keep you."

"I always loved you," Zechs said. His tone was blunt, his voice shifting registers and sliding back into the deep, dark rasp that had begun to emerge over the past few months.

"How could that happen?" Treize murmured.

There was a long silence, filled with breathing and heartbeat. The wind carried the smell of spring into the room – melting snow and bare, heavy soil. Dust glittered in a swath of cool sunlight, and a fly started buzzing, caught in the folds of the muslin curtain.

"One year," Zechs said. "Nobody would say what was going on. Mother fell out with your uncle over it. I thought you were a complete bastard."

"I couldn't... I didn't know what to say."

More silence. Laughter outside, distant and muted. Ann's voice, then Dorothy's, the words melting away.

"You had a woman," Zechs said, and the lashing of bitterness in his voice cut Treize to the quick.

He pressed Zechs in an embraze that crushed the breath out of him. "I had this dream," Treize said, his lips moving against the warm edge of Zechs' ear. "We were walking through a wheatfield. It was summer, and I could hear a lark, too high for us to see. The sky was blue, like your eyes. It smelled of hot dust." He drew back and caught Zechs' gaze. "We were old." Treize smiled. "Two old men together. It felt so peaceful."

Zechs shifted, sliding his arms around Treize and hugging him, cautious not to pull any stitches. "You want to quit?" This time, it was only a heartbeat or two before the stillness gave way to anger, but his voice didn't rise. "I applied to the Academy. And don't you dare meddling. I'm good enough for them, I know it; and I will enlist."

"You-"

"I want to be close to you."

"This isn't the way."

"Stop telling me what to do." Zechs let go and pushed back against Treize. "Let off."

Treize winced and rolled onto his back, closing his eyes. Zechs scowled at him. "I'm not stupid, you know. We watched the news. They gave you a hero's welcome. Gunshot salute, a mini parade, medals, jumping up the promotion ladder." A small pause, then, "You could get back here and forget about the rest. How many men want your position? And how many people are left in my life?"

Treize angled one arm over his eyes. His lips were set in a straight, white line.

Zechs stared at him. "And don't take it out on your mother. I talked it over with your uncle. You got any beef, it's with him."

"You got better at manipulating people," Treize snapped, the smooth veneer cracking.

"I didn't need to. He was keen to help."

"Sure he was." With a grunt and a gasp, Treize propped himself up on his elbows and looked at Zechs. "He knows. Or he has a good idea. You're his wildcard."

"Why do you always think it's about you?"

"This is," Treize said, anger colouring his tone. "And you let it happen. Of all the options you have, you chose this... bullshit."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I have a life, you know."

"And you're throwing it away."

For a moment, they fell silent, and then Treize sagged and wrapped his arms around Zechs, who yielded. It was a strangely soft embraze, as if all strength had been sapped from him. "I can't... I cannot quit now."

Zechs, unsettled by this, grabbed Treize's shoulders. "Why not?"

Another pause, before Treize let go of an unsteady breath. "What would you think of a stranger who broke into your house and murdered everyone in sight?"

Zechs turned pale. He dug his fingers into Treize's flesh, and Treize began to gently stroke his back. "I shot people I never met before, of whom I knew only what I'd been told, on the word of men I cannot judge. I aimed guns at children. A child tried to shoot me down, and a bunch of civilians blew up my jeep." A small pause, then, "I never understood my father until then."

Zechs let go and rose from the bed. "I want a shower." He left without looking back, slamming the door behind him.

xxx

**Notes:**

1 Мя́гко сте́лет, да жёстко спать. - He makes the bed soft, yet it is hard to sleep on.  
2 Russian folk tunes - Solovy (Nightingale); Chernoy Voron (Black Raven); Katyusha (a girl's name).


	5. Chapter 5

**Episode 5 – The bird is known by its flight.**1

xxx

It was the image that always got him. After the family party, followed by a jumble of snippets taken from news recordings and surveillance recorders, there was Treize, alone in the centre of a vaguely lit room. He was in his field uniform, but his head was uncovered, his beret tucked into his belt. Zechs thought that in his green-and-brown Specials fatigues and greased lace-up boots, Treize appeared taller and bulkier than in his fancy dress uniform. His hands were loosely linked in front of him, and he looked straight at the lens. Zechs wasn't sure whether he knew that the camera was there. Treize's expression was guarded, cool, non-committal, his eyes appraising yet tired. Zechs could tell how exhausted he was, from the dark edge beneath them, from the web of crow's feet that fanned from their corners, the twin lines between his brows and the shade of stubble on his cheeks. Yet in spite of this, Treize managed to retain the hard edge of the professional soldier – there wasn't a trace of give in his posture, the set of his mouth, or the touch of arrogance in the way he held his head, slightly tilted, with his chin up, as if looking down at everyone and everything around him.

It was the image of someone Zechs had never gotten used to. A deeply, disturbingly familiar stranger.2

A flash of light, a wobble and visible sharpening of the picture, and Treize was wading away from the lens, through the white-foaming waves on a golden-blue beach. He was naked down to a pair of baggy black swimming trunks – space force issue – and sunburned, his lobster-hued skin covered in sand. When he was thigh-deep in the water, bobbing with the waves, he turned to wave – and then he barged towards the recorder, stooping as if to scoop up handfuls of water to splash at the lens.

Zechs froze the image before it would black out because the recorder had been knocked into the waves, and the file was finished anyway.

Treize's arms were outstretched, a spray of glittering drops issuing from his hands towards someone Zechs didn't know, had never found out about. His eyes, his mouth, were laughing but tight. His skin glistened, and his hair stuck in wet tangles to his temples. On his face danced freckles and the reflection of the water. Zechs stared.

_I thought that I'd know you because I loved you. Turned out that I never really knew Treize the Soldier. You told me that trust was a burden. Were you afraid I'd dump you? I guess I'll never find out, but it hurts, this not-knowing._

The music wove into his mind, and suddenly he was aware of the backdrop of silence. He reached out, but his touch went through Treize's hands, sending ripples through the illusion. Zechs slid off the sofa and dropped to his knees, closing his arms in an embrace until he was hugging himself. A flash of longing ripping through him with a ferocity as if he could will the image to fill with flesh, to gel and solidify into something he could hold...

xxx

"What's the point?" Marimaia's voice startled him, and he scrambled – for composure, and to his feet. His head was hurting, a slow, pulsing ache.

"What?"

"This. You coming here. Dragging me along."

"I wasn't allowed to leave you on Mars," he said, settling back on the sofa. He filled a tumbler and drank without thinking about it again.

"What, because a bunch of crazy L3 rusties could show up and kick off a new rebellion? Don't make me laugh. I could just walk out of here, anyway."

"Enjoy," he said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in his tone. The steppe and the forest could swallow people without a trace, even those familiar with the territory.

She sat down next to him. "You don't scare me."

"I could if I wanted to. I'm the bogeyman."

"Funny," she said, "I thought you were just a scared little kid."

He glanced at her, an unpleasant half-smile tugging at his mouth. "Stop analysing me."

"I wouldn't want to. It's too messy up here." She described a small circle with her forefinger against her temple. "I mean, in your brainbox."

"As long as you're all clear."

Her eyes were tired and oddly probing.

_Too old, _he thought vaguely, _how old is too old?_

"You know," she said, her tone a mix of anger and resignation, "if they'd let me anywhere near an engineering book, I could learn something. How can I be rehabilitated if I can't be useful? But they check everything – my food, my clothes, the books they let me read. I can't watch news programmes or have mail, not even old papers; I'm not allowed to write to anyone or paint or do anything creative. A week before this trip, they implanted new trackers." She stretched out her left arm; on the back of the lower portion he could see a fresh pair of lengthwise scars, each about a finger's length and coarsely stitched up. "The chief shrink did this. She's always snapping at my heels. They scan my brain and transmit to a new decoder supposed to monitor my actions, vitals and location. It's new equipment, and they're testing it out. Did you know that I can't even have a pen for patient notes?"

The pain in his head started to swell. He touched his temple, rubbing firmly. "So what? Isn't it always the same crap that people tell you?"

"Yes, and it's depressing."

He shrugged. "You got a lifetime to get used to it." It was a deliberate, cruel barb.

"So do you," she shot back.

To hear it from her drove him to rise and look for an escape.

xxx

He spent some time chopping wood in the backyard where a pile of raw logs was stacked high in one of the old stables, now empty of life and clean, the smell of horses barely there. He worked in boots, jeans and an old tee; it soon stuck to his skin, chest and back and armpits soaked with sweat. It was good, solid, mindless work – grab a log, settle it on the ground, swing the long axe and split it in half, then split the pieces again until they were about fingerthick. Hold the smaller ones and watch that the axe didn't hack into fingers instead of wood. He enjoyed the precision of it, and the risk. It helped that the blindingly sharp explosions of energy the system sent through him found a vent other than hitting or shooting someone.

He filled a willow-crate that he carried on his back into the stable and tipped out carelessly on the ground, adding to the pile already there, a reserve for autumn and winter. When he was done, he dusted himself down and went to the pump in the yard to wipe his face with cold water, before settling in the library.

Above the dark line of the trees beyond the meadows, the sky was streaked crimson. He was humming a tune he'd learned from Treize.

_If a friend joined my path,_

_It would cheer up my journey...__3_

A children's song, upbeat and cheery and a little silly. Treize, no more than thirteen, singing in his breaking voice into Zechs' ear while they were curled up together in Zechs' big bed. Only later did Zechs find out that Treize had changed the word 'friends' to 'friend' in every verse.

Years later, the same lines would be filled with sarcasm for Zechs, and with a barely noticeable touch of irony for Treize. Too tight, too threadbare to cover what had gathered behind them – longing, anger, pain. Betrayal.

It was only when he clunked the basket onto the flagstones of the kitchen floor that he started wondering why the song had crossed his mind then.

xxx

**Interlude 5 – Bare**

xxx

Treize used the time to change the dressings he was still wearing on his scars – even after the long time he's spent recovering, his wounds had not completely healed yet. Splinters of shrapnel buried deep in his flesh, oozing as they slowly and painfully work their way out. Dirty wounds, scraped and left open to avoid locking infections in, and taking months for his body to repair. Where he's been stitched back together because there was no choice, the scars were coarse and lurid crimson. Some of the injuries had been reopened, debrided, resutured or left open and packed with sterile gauze more times that he cared to remember. He bore it all, somehow made it through, but he was still pumping antibiotics and painkillers into his body on a regularly reviewed and carefully orchestrated regimen. His final medical assessment had not been scheduled yet, and he worried that it might spell the end of his career as a soldier.

He winced as he dabbed the knotty, raw swath of scar tissue on his flank with desinfectant, and for a few moments he was too preoccupied to realise that the door had opened, just enough to avoid reaching the point when the hinges would creak.

He bent forward to dig for the iodine salve to smear on the wound before putting on vaseline gauze and fresh cotton bandages, and nearly dropped when a fresh spike of pain lanced through him. He felt as if his guts were about to fall out of his belly. He propped himself on the floor with one hand; splaying the other on his stomach, he tried to will his mind away from this.

It was too late to pretend when he registered the small creak, and then Zechs knelt by him and helped him sit up and lie back on the bed.

Treize closed his eyes and breathed out sharply. "Jesus," he squeezed out through clenched teeth.

"And how long did you think of keeping this shit up?" Zechs crossed the room and rummaged through the bottles of drops and pills on the desk by the door.

Treize cringed. "I'm just a bit... overworked."

"What, from messing about with your cousin? Or from getting plastered and horsing around?"

"I haven't messed about with anyone."

"Is this the right stuff?" Zechs held up a fat, creased tube and a blisterpack of pills.

Treize dragged his eyes open and nodded.

Zechs settled on the edge of the mattress. "Open your mouth."

"Aaaah..." Treize swallowed the painkillers. They were followed by a rough, quick kiss that caught him by surprise, but he thought it might have been a flash of wishful thinking because when he looked up, Zechs was glaring at him with an expression bordering on hostile.

"I'm not going to mother you."

"Why are you so jealous?"

"That's grand. I'm not jealous, but – ah, never mind."

Treize gripped Zechs' wrist. "Don't tell my mother. I don't want her to start fussing."

"I don't know..."

Treize's clasp grew harder, leaving reddening marks on Zechs' pale skin. "Promise."

"What do I get?"

"Excuse me?"

"I thought your ears are fine."

Treize pondered for a few moments before relucantly glancing at Zechs. "Well... what would you like?"

A tiny smile appeared in the corners of Zechs' mouth. "See you naked."

Treize blushed even as he frowned. "I don't look that great now."

"I don't care." Zechs started to get up. "But if you want to be precious about it-"

"Wait."

Zechs' brows rose a little, his expression cool and critical, way too detached for a fourteen-year-old, Treize thought as he conceded defeat. He turned left, then right to wriggle out of his still unbuttoned shirt, then shuffled on the bed until he felt reasonably at ease, and undid the fly of his slacks. Careful not to pull any stitches or scars, he raised his hips and pushed the trousers down along with his underpants. He moved his legs to shove the clothes down to his ankles and then over his feet.

Zechs sat down as before. For a few heartbeats, there was only silence as he looked Treize up and down, taking in every detail. Broken and put back together, the marks of war on pale skin. Treize's frame had broadened and filled out, but during his enforced recovery, some of his strength had wasted away, and he looked oddly vulnerable like this, stuck between teen-age and adulthood, his face, his expression much too old for his body. Treize, cautiously pushing himself up onto his elbows, watched Zechs.

Zechs laid his hands on Treize's feet and started stroking, slowly, tenderly, his touch following his gaze. He avoided Treize's groin, but when he cupped Treize's face to kiss him, Treize turned his head away. Zechs paused, then kissed his cheek.

"You scratch," Zechs noted, wedging himself onto the narrow strip of mattress between Treize and the edge of the bed. He reached for the blanket and pulled it over both their bodies, then splayed his hand on Treize's chest. He pressed his face into the crook of Treize's neck. "I can feel you breathe. I can feel your heart."

Treize turned his face into Zechs' hair. It still smelled a bit of dust and horse, and the aroma of the thawing forest. A tiny twig was caught in a knot of blond strands, and a fresh, scratched-raw mosquito bite bloomed on the side of Zechs' neck.

"All yours," Treize murmured. "Don't you know that?"

"How would I?"

"I thought you could feel that."

Zechs let his hand wander lower until Treize squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lips.

"Let go," Zechs said, his voice low and deep in Treize's ear.

Treize pressed his hand over Zechs fingers, stilling him. "I'm too... I can't."

"Why?"

With his other hand, Treize slowly combed through Zechs' hair. "It's not right."

"Because?"

Treize's throat bobbed as he swallowed, his lips – hot and dry – touched Zechs' ear. "I want you to have a choice. A real choice."

"Like you? I mean, your mother offered you one: marry or else."

Treize made a sound between a huff and a small laugh. "No. Marry Dorothy or else."

"Cool. You'd be killing each other."

A grunt was the answer, and Treize's breathing deepened. "Milliardo... please, let go or... Jesus..." Treize shuddered, his eyes closed and his mouth opened in a silent gasp. Zechs lay still, pressed against him, leaving his hand where it was until Treize's breathing returned to normal.

"You won't touch me?" he whispered, hopeful yet not surprised when Treize silently shook his head. Zechs closed his eyes. Clamping one arm across Treize's chest, he sought and found relief for himself in silence.

xxx

That night, Zechs slept in Treize's bed, his long body wrapped around Treize's more compact form. Treize lay awake until dawn greyed the sky and he finally trusted himself enough to try to sleep.

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Видна́ пти́ца по полёту. - The bird is known by its flight.  
2 GW LA The Khushrenada Affair  
3_ Если с другом вышел в путь – Веселей дорога... (Когда мои друзья со мной)_


	6. Chapter 6

**Episode 6 – Beetween two fires.**1

xxx

Even at the height of summer, the evenings got cool quickly as soon as the sun dropped low onto the horizon. It lingered there, a ball of liquid copper, for a long time as if to cling on with all its might, before sinking away in a blaze of red and gold. As soon as it was gone, the mild summer breeze sharpened, bringing chill from the frozen flanks of distant mountains and the eternal snow of the Northern plains.

_As if, _Zechs thought as he cut thin chips of applewood, _summer was nothing but a blanket to cover the ice beneath._

He went to light a small fire in the European-style enamelled stove that stood on one side of the library. Once the fire had taken hold, he settled on the sofa. Marimaia, in a Mars-issue tracksuit, joined him. Hunched in the far corner of the sofa, with her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, she watched Zechs replaying the holographic file, like every evening.

"He never got in touch," she said into the lull after the last sequence.

His gaze fixed on the image of Treize in the waves, Zechs lit a cigarette. "Perhaps," he said heavily, "that's not the truth."

"We can't ask him now, can we?"

"Or your family," Zechs hit back, promptly and with precision.

She blinked and turned away, watching the sky dissolve into streaks of colour – deep red, grey and orange, fading into pale yellow and faint green. In the room there was no light but the holograms, ghostly in the dusky silence, and the restless glow of the fire.

"Look," he said after the first deep lungful of smoke, "I'm not asking forgiveness. I'm not asking anything from you. But if he'd known, he'd have tried to contact your mother. Perhaps he did. He always wanted kids; it was something I couldn't give him."

"You never wanted to know?"

"There was no point."

"Weren't you suspicious?"

"Perhaps. It's been too long to remember everything."

She rested her chin on her knees, her gaze drifting to Treize, then moving on aimlessly, before Zechs felt its weight.

"How is it to sleep with someone? I mean, with someone you like?"

Treize's image, arms outstretched and glittering in the water, shimmered in the emptiness of the room. For a few heartbeats, Zechs looked at it, wisps of blue smoke trailing from his mouth, before turning the projector off. The after-images glimmered in his vision for a little longer, before fading away. In the stillness of the cool summer night, he could hear the breathing of the old house – the rustling of the embers, the creaking of floorboards. Beyond the stink of fresh paint and newly oiled planks were the familiar aromas of smoke and old wood. The renovation had been completed years ago, but the smell wouldn't leave because he wasn't at home often enough, and during his long absences, nobody used the house.

"It's funny," he said at last, squashing the cigarette butt on a saucer he kept under the corner of the sofa. "We didn't particularly _like_ each other. But I know that I loved him. That I still love him, and that it was mutual." He paused to gather his thoughts, find the right words, and then added quietly, "Treize and I, we've done some terrible things. But the past is gone. The only thing I can change is the future."

"I haven't got one."

"Don't you have any memories?"

She turned away and crossed the room to look out of the window. Smudges of dark red layered with slate grey and orange on the horizon. A single star blinked high in the sky. For a few heartbeats, the shard of gundanium reflected the last crimson light, a lonely sentinel in the murky distance, and then night covered it too.

"At this time of the year," Zechs said, "the meadows are full of flowers. They smell of earth and honey. There are raspberry shrubs at the edge of the woods, and when you walk along that driveway to the airstrip, you can find wild strawberries." He smiled in spite of himself.

_And I'm not going to talk about all the stuff you can do with berries... You kept picking raspberries and stuffing them into my mouth. The juice was red, dripping from my lips onto your chest, and I freaked, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing as I could wipe out what I'd seen, but you caught me and didn't let go until I'd calmed down..._

"Back home," she said, her voice small in the dusky room, "we kept plants indoors. Flowers, herbs, that kind of stuff. When I was little, some people bought boxes of soil from Earth. Do you know how expensive that was? They grew lots of things. Fruit, vegetables. It's big business. People paid a fortune for Earth-style food. Potatoes, fruit, greens. Lots of strawberries – they were growing them in hydroponics systems, that's easier, but people said they don't have the same flavour as Earthgrown fruit. My mother gave me apples for Christmas once which my grandfather had bought in the most expensive store we had up there. I still remember the taste." She began to rock gently. "I can't remember much. Perhaps they fiddled with my head. Or that's just how it is."

"If you don't talk you'll forget."

She shrugged. "Why not? I'd rather stop hurting inside."

Zechs watched her through the image of Treize. "I know who has access to the tracker codes and transmissions."

She tensed but didn't answer.

"You can have pen and paper and whatever else you want. The books," he nodded at the empty shelves, "are in storage, but there are a few boxes up in the attic. I kept some vinyls, if you like music."

"You really live in a museum, don't you?" she said, but her tone wasn't sharp. "Or are you trying to soften me up?"

"Why should I? You can do what you like. For me, it's easier like this. And nobody's going to show up if I don't want them here."

_Never again. That evening after we got back from the dacha, and the press was at the house, along with the Foundation men... I didn't want to leave, but you sent me away, and by the time I realised what that meant, I was high in the sky and on my way...__2__ How could I have been so stupid? So blind? How could I ever have left you? Perhaps this, in spite of all your plans and machinations, was the ultimate betrayal..._

She stared at him. "You can guarantee that?"

"What do you have to lose?" he countered.

Still reluctant, she tried to read him, but he knew she would only see what he wanted to share.

"Is this some kind of mood you're in?" she questioned. Uneasy, hopeful, hating herself for it – he saw it in her face and relived it all.

"I have no moods," he said, feeling the system as a low, almost gentle hum.

xxx

He ordered the books and boxes back from storage, and the men from the airstrip delivered them to the house. Reluctant at first, Marimaia soon lost herself in unpacking and looking at the things that brought to life the family she'd never met. Madame Khushrenada's clothes. The dress uniform of Treize's father that had been sent to the family once he had been deemed missing in action. It was complete with rank insignia and decorations and a small, finely stitched mend in the lining of the left armpit. Poking out of a box filled with shredded paper, the unfinished model of a fighter jet. Photographs in frames and albums, stacks of old-fashioned vinyls, music discs and tapes together with the matching, antique equipment to play them. The soft furnishings that Zechs had found too dark and plush, and that had given the house its unmistakably Russian flair – embroidered curtains, table linens, bedclothes and cushions, wallhangings with proverbs – brightly ornamented, so that even those who couldn't read would understand them – that had once decorated the kitchen. A box of woven birchbark contained, packed in white muslin, a couple of reproduction icons that had hung in Madame's bedroom. Even the crystal and laquerware arrived back at the house, intact and sparkling as new.

Marimaia spent days and nights silently going through everything, in a quiet, systematic way. Touching, smelling, rubbing fabrics against her cheek, stroking pictures as if she could feel the warm textures of flesh and skin and hair.

It was strange, Zechs thought, to see the house fill slowly with all the things he'd put away over the years. He rummaged through some of the boxes himself, reluctant and curious what it would do to him to sink his hands into his memories. Among sheafs of photographs that nobody had found the time to put into albums, he found the stainless-steel wallet with the Khushrenada coat of arms Treize had given him an eternity ago. He slowly rubbed his thumb over the engraving. He was waiting for something – a jab of pain, a twinge of regret – but nothing happened.

Relief seeped through him, and an eternity of pressure was slowly lifting off his chest. Surprised and vaguely grateful, he put his tobacco and cigarette paper into the wallet and slipped it into his pocket.

While Marimaia kept searching, he took care of the fire and their food – rations of canned meat, powdered soup, and hard, dry bread stored safely in the larder. There were even some bottles of aged elderflower liquor, thick with dust, untouched since the last Christmas the family had spent here together.

xxx

"Here." He held one of Treize's filigree-encased teaglasses out to Marimaia.

She looked up from the pile of pictures around her – she was kneeling on an embroidered cushion – and took the glass after a moment's hesitation. "It smells nice."

"Elderflower liquor," he said, and a tiny smile appeared on his lips. "With honey and hot water. His... your great-grandmother, she got us terribly drunk on the stuff once."3

Her brows drew together, and her lips thinned. "Really."

He shrugged. "We were ill. It helped."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Don't play this stupid game with me."

Instead of anwering, he crouched to pick up an old-fashioned photo album and leaf through it. "This troika..."

She craned her neck. "That's... him, driving?"

"Your grandmother gave him the horses for a Christmas present. They were good stock, expensive... he raced me but the ice broke, and they drowned in the river. He nearly died that day, but he hated me for dragging him out."

"Perhaps he was just pissed off that he'd lost."

He rubbed his thumb over the photo, over Treize's laughing face. _No, you were furious, _he thought. _You were yelling at me, and it made sense only when I could think clearly again – that you were mad because you thought you'd endangered my life. How ironic..._

The familiar pain seeped back into him, the agony as sharp as ever, and he thought it would choke him.

Marimaia took a sip of the hot drink. "When did you do it for the first time?"

The question surprised him, and it broke the spell. He suddenly he became aware of her closeness. Glancing up, he met her gaze, clear and probing, and he also realised that he didn't mind. "Why does this matter?"

She ran her fingertips over the filigree, intricate silverwork showing phoenix birds and roses. "Up there, on Mars, it feels like being buried alive."

"Now we are here. Until next spring at least." He shook his head, a slow smile curving his lips. "I meant that you won't have to think about going back until the next shuttle leaves."

She bit her lip. "I hate this."

He brushed some dust from a large corrugated cardboard box, then carefully eased the half-finished model out of its bed of tissue paper.

"Will they ever let me go back home?" she asked to his back.

Zechs sat down and put the model in his lap and began to examine it carefully. "No."

_Neither you, nor me. What is home, anyway? I'd get in the way in Cinq, I and my bloody past. Isn't my home here, where we were happy? At least I thought we were. I was, for a short while._

She shifted to ease the weight on her knees. "You said 'we'."

"What?"

"Earlier. _We_, not _I_. As if you couldn't be by yourself." Marimaia got up and wandered to the window, her silhouette small amid the piles of things and boxes.

"I'm fine here," he said, gently prodding at the small pieces that formed the plane.

"Is it true that you could have dumped me at Preventers?"

He shrugged and put the model on the floor. Taking a pen knife from his jeans pocket and a piece of spare plastic he found in the box, he started whittling a replacement for the missing jet turbine, his fingers steady and patient. There also was a tiny, half-empty tube of glue, still liquid beneath its neatly screwed-on lid.

"Let's say it is," she went on, "Then why am I here? Either you can't bear being alone. Or you want something. Or you plan to get rid of me."

He laughed without looking up. "You sure you didn't read any crime stories recently? Conspiracy stuff perhaps?"

She reddened. "I didn't."

"I said 'we' because that's how it was," Zechs said, holding the tiny part while watching the glue dry. "Him and me. Not him, me. That only made sense much later."

"Did you ever have a girlfriend?"

He felt heat rise to his cheeks, but there was no Zero buzz, and he was amazed and relieved. "Not really."

"That's a yes-or-no question."

He realised that he wasn't sure how to deal with this. Perhaps it was a genuine question. Or a warped kind of pick-up line, designed to test and provoke. "Okay," he said flatly. "If you mean THAT," he made a dirty gesture with his free hand, "then yes, I tried that."

"But?"

He gave her a thin smile. "How could anybody live up to Treize?"

xxx

There had been no lunch, just tea and vodka. Zechs scraped together a dinner that was not much different from their breakfast. He set the table in the dining room for two but did not wait for her. When she joined him to eat, he felt quite drunk, with Zero no more than a distant hum, almost pleasant in its familiarity.

_Perhaps it would be too still without. Living in complete silence. Like Mars. _

The fire in the tiled European fireplace was burning low, the embers covered in ashes. The alcohol and the fading warmth, the memories that sloshed into his unguarded consciousness, made him hurt.

Marimaia tried to use the samovar and ended up with water in her teaglass. He showed her how to pour tea extract from the small pot on top of the big-bellied contraption and add hot water from the tap at the bottom.

She wrapped her fingers around the teaglass. "It feels strange," she said, "to be here."

He pushed back his plate of hardtack and canned pork. "Why?"

"It's only my second time on Earth. I haven't been home since I wound up on Mars."

"Where would you go if you could choose?"

She hunched her shoulders, as if to make herself smaller. "I wouldn't know. It's not worth thinking about because I don't have that choice."

"You're talking to me," he noted, quite incongruously.

She gave him a long, strange look. "I wondered what he found in you. If I hadn't seen news footage back then, I wouldn't believe what they say about you. The stuff you did." She hesitated before adding, "I imagined you were like my uncle. He wasn't much older than me, and he was loud and tough, always up for action. Playing crazy games even when we were little. He got quite a few hidings from my grandfather because he never listened, and he was always trying to protect my mother even though she was older than him."

Zechs felt a surge in his mind, making him breathless for a moment, but it subsided and he sagged a little with relief. "I wasn't like that," he said. "Treize was." He glanced outside, where the dark meadows faded into the black line of the forest, beneath a deep, black sky full of stars. "When he got back from L3, he didn't come straight home. We had no access to him, and he didn't get in touch until he suddenly turned up. He arrived Easter, very fitting. The resurrection of the dead hero, more than a year after he'd disappeared from our radar. He played his part, like a good boy."

_And I was an idiot to let it happen. A grand theatre. Duty before pleasure. You had no time to pull back – they wouldn't let you, and you didn't want to. What was it, basking in your new glory as freshly decorated hero? Showing off your new stripes? Or didn't you want to face me? I felt miserable, and by the time it had all died down and we were alone, I was boiling._

xxx

**Interlude 6 – Small Change**

xxx

Morning light filled the room when Zechs woke, hugging the thick down pillow to his stomach. It was cold, and a draft touched the bare skin of his arm and shoulders that weren't buried beneath the covers. He guessed that the window was open. The warm scent of applewood smoke laced the air, and he could hear birdsong. Treize's side of the bed was empty.

Zechs sat up, heart pounding with a sudden, irrational and overwhelming panic that deflated when he saw Treize. Dressed in an old-fashioned morning gown of grey velvet, he perched on the windowsill. His hair was disshevelled and sweaty, his skin so pale that it seemed translucent, and under his eyes lay deep shadows. He looked ill and tired, but the set of his shoulders was rigid, his posture tense.

Zechs got up and crossed the room. Treize laid his head back and closed his eyes as Zechs kissed him firmly on the mouth. Zechs let his tongue linger, but when he found no response, he drew back.

"You've changed," he said, his tone somewhere between accusing and questioning.

Treize's smile was slow. "Don't we all?"

"What made you?"

Treize glanced outside, his gaze roving into the distance without finding hold anywhere. "What I saw," he said at last. "What I did. And what I felt."

Zechs sat down opposite him. "What did you feel?"

Treize took a moment to answer. "I was scared... that I'd die." He reached out to run his fingers through Zechs' hair, his eyes meeting those of his friend. "That I wouldn't see you again, and that I wouldn't be able to tell you..."

Zechs stared, motionless, holding his breath. Suddenly Treize pulled him close, his grip hard and unyielding. "It wasn't war," he said quietly into Zechs' ear. "It was like in Cinq, but I didn't have the courage my father had. I followed my orders, to the letter. And when I thought I'd die, I could only think that I wanted to get back to you."

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Ме́жду двух огне́й.  
2 See LA Winter  
3 See LA Winter


	7. Chapter 7

**Episode 7 – The scythe has hit a stone.**1

xxx

The next morning, Marimaia knocked the door to Treize's room where Zechs, barefoot, in tee and jeans, was sitting on the windowsill. The window was open, and the scent of summer wafted in – baking earth, honeyed meadows, and the roses that framed the window. He was smoking, slowly rubbing his thumb over the engraved wallet. In the light of the shimmering day, his hair seemed to be covered in a layer of ash.

"Hey," she said, standing in the doorway, "I've been looking for you. Can I come in?"

_No, nobody should come in here. _

He glanced at her, reluctant to reply.

"Was that his room?" she asked, before he could find the resolve.

He breathed out a stream of smoke from his nostrils, then he nodded. "Yes."

_Our place. Yours and mine..._

She stepped in and sat down on the edge of the bed. "It looks bare."

"It needed painting."

She gave him a slow smile. "Sure, like the rest of the house. Like us."

"Like us?"

"We could do with a fresh coat of paint, couldn't we? A bit of filler to cover up the cracks, some gloss and polish..." She shifted back against the wall. "I should be your enemy."

He closed his fingers around the wallet and leaned against the carved windowframe and let his gaze stray to the distant line of the forest. On his collarbone, he could feel Treize's dogtags, hard and familiar.2 The sun was warm on his face; the smell of damp earth mingled with cigarette smoke. He felt relaxed and pleasant. Sparrows were chirping on the roof, and under the overhanging eaves, swifts were dashing about. Having returned from warmer places, they had started repairing their mudnests, and soon they would be feeding a clutch of young.

"It's weird," Marimaia said. "But I feel nothing. I used to hate you. It helped to hate you."

"I hated him, for a while," Zechs said through a breath of smoke that curled blue and lazy into the hot summer day. "When he got back from L3 and wouldn't talk to me about it."

She smoothed the sheets by her side and put her hands on the soft down cover, and he wondered what she was thinking.

"I've never seen something like this," she said to his back. "Weird, isn't it?"

He narrowed his eyes against the smoke and the gleam of summer. "Don't you want to go back home?"

"Home?"

"To L3."

She shrugged. "That was a joke, right? Anyway, from what I heard, they're not at war at the moment. I don't want to kick off another one."

Zechs rose and squashed the fag out in the fireplace. "This place is too large for one." He didn't wait for the silence to grow but looked at her. "Too cold."

Marimaia stared at him, her face pale, her eyes shaded. "Colonists need visa and residential permits to stay. We need work permits, too, and have to sign support waivers, in case things go wrong. We'll just be shipped back home. We have to pre-pay our return tickets before we arrive on Earth, and we get tagged when we get here. Unless things have changed – have they?"

Zechs sat down next to her. "For someone who isn't allowed books or news, you know a lot."

"Just retelling what my uncle was always raving about."

"We might have moved on."

She laughed, a harsh, unhappy sound. "C'mon."

Zechs made no reply, and she shook her head. "Didn't think so. It still works like that, doesn't it? If we get a visum, we have to report to the Central Preventers Registry every month. We can't own anything on Earth. And I don't even exist. I can't use my name anywhere. They've stripped me of my identity, and I have a registration as a 'hostile element class C, code red'."

"Not suitable for re-integration," he said quietly.

She huffed. "That means life. On Mars." She caught his glance and added, "The shrink let my file lie around. She was busy with one of the engineers when I stepped in."

_That's all the therapy some of us need, _Zechs thought wryly.

"Now you can carry on feeling sorry for yourself," Marimaia said. "At least you can choose whether you bury yourself alive."

He linked his fingers between his knees. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the wall. His head hurt, a dull, throbbing ache deep inside his skull as his conscious mind tried to keep Zero at bay.

_The truth is, _he thought,_ that we're dead the moment the first time we pull the trigger..._

xxx

**Interlude 7 – Into the Dark**

xxx

Zechs pushed the dressing gown off Treize's shoulders. Slowly, he traced the marks on Treize's body, and then he leaned down to kiss them, one by one. Treize sat still, his eyes half-closed, his chest rising and falling evenly, until Zechs leaned back. "Some of this is new."

Treize said nothing, his expression blank, his gaze trailing into the distance. "It'll heal. It doesn't matter now, anyway."

"I've seen things like that, when Cinq fell," Zechs persisted, his voice flat and taut. "I watched a man being beaten to a pulp. He was one of the palace guards. The men who did it wanted to know where my sister and I were hiding. Tre, why're you not looking at me?"

Treize laid his hand on Zechs' thigh, stroking softly. "Laws, conventions... they're only good if you can enforce them."

"But this is recent. Why would they keep you for a year, then torture you before sending you back? What's behind this?"

"I don't know."

Zechs bit his lip. "Your father... when he grabbed me, I could smell blood. Blood and burned flesh... I tried to scream but he put his hand over my mouth and nose, and I could barely breathe. Then I realised I'd wet myself, and I had blood on my hands. I couldn't remember... I could never recall how it got there. Once he'd packed me onto the plane, he wiped it off. You know, it didn't bother me, but..."

"It didn't let you sleep." Treize finally met Zechs' gaze. For a moment they looked at each other in silence, until Zechs cleared his throat.

"Can you sleep at night, Tre?"

Another heartbeat, before Treize said, "Can we talk about something else?"

Zechs' took a sharp, deep breath. "Fine. I have news." He pulled a letter from his trouser pocket. The letter was printed on cheap, headed paper, worn thin at the folded edges. Zechs held it out to Treize. "I've been invited to sit the entrance exam. If I pass, I'll get in with the next intake of cadets."

Treize took the letter and read. Zechs watched his face – apprehension blooming, giving way to an odd mix of panic, anger and incredulity. Ashen pallor giving way to little flecks of red. "You can still withdraw." It sounded like an order, or a plea.

Zechs stared at him. "I thought you'd be proud."

"Proud..." The paper trembled in Treize's grip as he folded it. "It is terrible to feel helpless, but war is not the answer."

Zechs snatched the letter and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Then tell me that it's possible to live without fighting, and I'll go back and do it. I will talk instead, like my father. I'll be polite and ask the tanks to leave, and the guns, and the soldiers. What do you say, Tre, will they just go? Will they even let me finish?"

Treize bit his lip. Between them, silence grew until Zechs shook his head. "I will have the power to enforce my laws."

"This... this war will turn you into someone you don't want to know."

"No. I'll just be myself. I'll defend what's mine."

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Нашла́ коса́ на ка́мень.  
2 See LA Starshine


	8. Chapter 8

**Episode 8 – Maybe and somehow won't make any good.**1

xxx

Zechs left and returned with a bottle. "He wouldn't tell me anything about L3." He poured a glass of vodka and held it up, glancing at Marimaia through the clear liquid. "Want some? No?" He tipped the sharp stuff down his throat and refilled. Cradling the glass in his hands, he let his memories rise, along with the familiar ache in his chest. "I found out much later, when we were at war with each other. When he'd taken the reins from my sister to head up that last battle, so she didn't have to."

_You were good at that, strategies, scheming. You knew that Earth would need a new leader, someone unsullied, someone people could believe in, for that new peace of yours to stand a chance..._

Crouched in her corner of the couch. Marimaia looked at him warily. "What did you find out?"

Zechs turned the glass in his hands and watched the vodka slosh. Plain, no ice, the way he'd used to drink it with Treize, but Treize had been in control, and he hadn't, suffering in the knowledge that they were seeking relief in drink instead of each other.

The system was a quiet hum in his mind, just enough to keep him on edge.

_Why the hell can't I get drunk like everyone else? I mean, not just tipsy, but really, stupidly drunk. Enough to forget. No, I get drunk and can't forget a thing, clear as day, even if I can't move anymore. Zero as nanny. Who'd have thought that there is some use for it other than war? If it weren't for the side effects..._

"At Whitefang," he said, to cut off the widening loop of morose thoughts, "I heard rumours that the L3 rebels didn't know who they'd caught until someone told them. They decided to sell Treize to Barton, and the old man convinced Catalonia personally to strike a deal. Money, concessions, promises, for Treize's return. For the life of an eighteen year old career soldier. The colonists thought he was more valuable alive than dead. If they could have seen the future, they'd never have let him get away. At the time, nobody said anything about you."

Marimaia folded her legs under and wrapped her arms around herself. "My uncle," she said, "he came back after that."

Zechs finished his second drink and set the glass down by his feet. The alcohol burned in this throat and warmed his stomach, and it softened the spiky tendrils the system sent through his nerves. "Getting him out of prison on Earth was probably part of the deal."

"He wasn't himself anymore. He was ill and in pain, and he'd become bitter and angry."

"Just right for Whitefang," Zechs interjected quietly. "Ironic that Catalonia's money should have been poured into arming them."

"_Them_?"

He glanced at her. "Yes, _them_."

She snorted softly. "You coward. Why can't you own up to anything? They believed in you. In any case, you have no proof."

"I've done my research." Watching her, he saw in her eyes the acknowledgement, silent acceptance of what he was and who he had been. "And as to believing, I have my doubts. I was paid for my services, and I worked for my money."

"You monster."

"Yes. Just keep that in mind."

She linked her fingers, pulling at them to make the joints crick, a nervous habit that made him wonder where she'd picked it up. "And my mother?" she asked, her voice a little rough.

"Back then, I didn't know about her. But when I found out, I thought that perhaps the treatment Treize got had nothing to do with politics. Maybe it was personal." Zechs shook his head. "He wasn't the type to drop someone, for better or worse. If he'd known, if he'd been able to get in touch with her and you, he'd have done it. If it gives you any satisfaction, I had my suspicions, and it was something I found... difficult to live with."

xxx

**Interlude 8 – Secrets of War**

xxx

Easter was over. The earth was thawing, and the dirt roads were rapidly turning into knee-deep morass. Dorothy, Ann and the General were the last guests to take their leave. Dorothy made a show of hugging Zechs tightly and a touch too long. He bore it stiffly and stepped back as soon as she let go of him. Ann offered Treize her hand. She blushed when he pulled her close to firmly kiss her cheek, wishing her a safe journey. Madame smiled when the General kissed her hand. Dorothy rolled her eyes and swatted at a mosquito, its sharp zeeeh like a mini jet engine.

The General had a jeep with a driver, and as finally all farewells were said, they carefully picked their way along the track to the airfield.

xxx

Treize stepped into his mother's room, quietly pulling the door shut behind him. Madame Khushrenada, in a dressing gown of black quilted silk over a wintry shift of unbleached wool, was sitting at her desk by the window, overlooking the driveway. Her hair was loose, flowing over her back and the seat of the chair almost to the floor. There was a strand of grey on her left temple, and Treize wondered for a moment whether it was new, or whether he'd become too distant from his mother to notice her growing old. Before her lay the thick, leatherbound ledger that had been in the family for generations, recording the estate's churning business. She laid her pen down and half-turned to look up at him. Her gaze, clear and probing, made him uncomfortable. For a moment he wished himself out of this room that she filled with her presence, but then he noticed how withered her hands seemed, how thin and frail she looked, and felt ashamed.

Steeling himself, he pulled a footstool up and sat down so he had to tilt up his head to look at her. "Mama, we need to talk."

"Yes, we do." Her voice was calm, almost remote, as often when she wasn't putting up a front for the world around her.

"I am not going to marry," he said, watching her face, the small wrinkles around her mouth and in the corners of her eyes, the trace of tiredness beyond the firm set of her lips, the way the skin looked tight over her cheekbones. It crossed his mind that her features seemed to have shrivelled, dried out and sharpened, and it surprised him that he would think this, and that she would age like that.

She clasped her hands. Her skin had faded from pale gold to sallow, with brown spots and wrinkles, and pronounced bluish veins. "You cannot rush such a decision," she said quietly.

Outside, the world was preparing for spring. In the opulent seclusion of her room, with its painted walls and thick carpet, the ticking of the grandfather clock by the door hacked the stillness into slivers of time. In the corner opposite, above the desk, an icon of the Mother of God with the Child glowed dark and golden in the light of an eternal lamp.

He wanted to followed his impulse to reach out and enclose her hands with his, but he caught himself. _Not now_, he told himself, _there will be time for this later. When this is over._

"I thought about it enough," he replied, and the frost in his own voice surprised him. "When you're on the edge of dying, there's no time for lies."

She glanced down at her hands on the book. "Love." She shook her head. "You could pretend, just a little."

Unable to stay still, he jumped up and started to pace. "How much did you pretend? And how did it make you feel?" He hadn't intended for his words to sound that harsh, but then he did nothing to soften them.

"Your father and I worked well together."

Treize folded his arms and stared down at her. "Do you now wish you'd never taken him in? Milliardo? Did you ever feel anything for him?"

She gathered her gown tightly over her chest, her knuckles whitening. "I approved of your father's decision. Milliardo is my son as much as you are."

"So you allow him to do this? It's idiotic, and you know it!" he burst out.

Barely noticeable, her hands began to tremble. "General Catalonia has asked, quite directly, when you will become available to marry his daughter-"

He flushed crimson. "I am NOT marrying!"

"He seems to think that you and Dorothy are involved already."

"Involved?"

"That you have been intimate with each other."

"That's a lie!"

"That may be, but it will be hard to disprove. Even so, there is Ann. She still hopes that your affection for her might grow into something else. I am not even talking about the lesser advances I received on your behalf."

Treize tugged at his shirtcollar that suddenly seemed to choke him. The top button tore off. He caught it lightningfast and bit back a swearword. " Ann deserves someone who can love her," he said angrily.

"I am sure it is not as bad as you think it is. I know you would honour her, should she become your wife, and she would be a capable business partner for you. There are worse ways of being together than that."

"Oh, come now, Mama!"

Madame reached out to him. "You know this is about business. Be sensible."

Growing more agitated, Treize ignored her gesture. "Business, obligations," he ranted. "Is that really it? Family, tradition, what I owe my father?"

She blinked, and her voice was shaky as she retorted, "And politics, not to mention your career."

He laughed, a harsh, loud bark. "So Catalonia's given me an advance payment! I didn't realise he'd be that quick to ask for the change."

"The Catalonias have never been slow, and you accepted. You should reconsider your options."

"Options!" he exploded. "I can see the plan – get Milliardo to enlist, marry me off, everyone is fine?"

"Please, Treize, it isn't quite like that-"

"Because it's not going to happen. If there's something to pay, I'll do it, not Milliardo! You have no right to ruin his life, he is not a pawn in this shitty game, and I don't give a damn what anyone says!"

A shimmer of regret passed Madame's eyes, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. "At least wait. Take a little more time. Think about what it means for Milliardo, and perhaps you may wish to ask him what he wants."

"No," he flung back at her, "I won't... I can't do it. Tell them whatever you want. That it is too soon. That I've got a career to build and consolidate, that I'm not ready for a family. For heavens' sake, just give them whatever they will swallow!"

"Your uncle is no fool."

"Neither am I! I know our family. And the Catalonias have been after this... merger for a while now. I'm not interested."

"You may be able to face the world with this, but-"

"Have you got any idea what you've done? He needs time, not a military brainwash!"

"You cannot protect him forever. He wanted this-"

"He does not know what he wants yet!"

"He has a right to choose, just as you do."

Treize, his face an unhealthy shade of red, his eyes hostile, met his mother's gaze, and for a few breathless heartbeats he saw her pain, and then the warmth and the love he'd known since childhood slipped away from him, leaving him cold, with anger and desperation knotting deep in his belly. "Undo it," he said bluntly, "Or I'll never forgive you for this."

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Аво́сь да как-нибу́дь до добра́ не доведу́т. - Maybe and somehow won't make any good. (Don't rely on luck/chance.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Episode 9 – The North: There Be Monsters**

xxx

Marimaia drew her shoulders up. "You want me to feel sorry for you?"

Zechs felt Zero curling up in his head, ready to pounce. _Crazy,_ it crossed his mind, _why would I need that?_ Yet the system was rousing his mind and body to high alert. He was afraid of it, of being overwhelmed and losing control if he tried to resist. There was nothing else but to accept it. _A ride on the dragon...let's see then w__ho'll win this one._

When he answered, his voice was flat and cool. "What do you know about loving?"

Her cheeks flushed instantly. "I know how it is not to have it," she snapped. "I never knew who I was until my grandfather told me."

"Thanks to your mother, don't you think?"

She swallowed hard. "We argued a lot. Once I got her to talk about it. She said _he_ chose to leave because of you. She'd overheard my uncle and my grandfather joking about it. But she said it made sense, and she was bitter about it. He loved you more than her, more than me." A small, breathless break, then, "He shouldn't have. You wasted everything you had."

"Your mother, did she think he loved her? Because she patched him up and let him have his way?" It was low and deliberate, and he watched her composure crack and erode with each word. Words like stones to hurl at an enemy. She had underestimated him, he realised, and pretended too much; perhaps she had even thought she could hold her own in this struggle. There was a twinge of pity, buried beneath a mountain of cold, hard information as he wondered whether she knew, and if so, if she understood what it meant to live with Zero in his mind.

"You bastard," she said, her voice shaky.

"No," he said, "that's you. You look like him, but you're nothing like him. Everyone out there on those junk-heaps you call colonies, you're all... stunted."

"You weren't so fussy when you let Whitefang buy you in."

He shrugged. "I've learned."

Clutching the knitted cuff of her jumper-sleeve, she scrubbed the back of her hand over her face. The jumper was, like all her clothes, cast-off Preventer issue. It looked threadbare and too big, something that bothered him. "Sure," she murmured. "How did he do it? I mean, to make you jump and wag your tail? Did he say 'fetch'?"

Instead of an answer, he put the holodisc on and sat watching Treize's image bloom and fade, until he froze it on the last scene again. He had won. It had been much easier than he had expected, and he felt neither elation nor misery. Instead, it made him feel uneasy in a way he had not known in years.

_A child, _he thought, with a wash of exhaustion that meant Zero was draining his strength, _I won against a kid._

"Why are you still talking to me?" he asked, before it sunk in what that meant, and then he couldn't catch the words anymore.

"There's nobody else. I've got to talk to somebody. I caught myself talking to the mirror, or to the walls. Take it as payback."

"Save it," he said, "you're wasting your time." He reached out, and before she could coil up and lash out, he grabbed her jumper sleeve. The fabric felt old and worn out. "You need clothes." He let go of her, and the system inside him shuddered and subsided. It was a surprise, and for a heartbeat or two he listened, but it drew back and it stayed down.

"I didn't like becoming this," she said, her voice raw and quiet. "Up there, on Mars, it's like the ultimate prison. The same people, the same troubles. They're all losers, and we're no better. Aren't they afraid of you? That's why you're stuck with me, isn't it?"

Zechs let his head loll back and half-closed his eyes. He could still see the hologram, flitered through his eyelashes. As if Treize would come to life any moment. Longing shot through him and he bit back a gasp. "Maybe."

"Drink some more, perhaps it pickles your brain so it keeps."

He settled the glass in his lap. "Is that meant to be funny?"

"No, I mean it. I'm sure somebody would want to slice it up and figure out what's going on up there." She stretched out her hand as if to touch, brushing straight through the arm of Treize's image. The picture dimmed and shook before stabilising again. Treize, smiling eternally into the lens, the sun in his hair and light in his eyes. "Amazing what they can do with holograms."

Zechs took another gulp. "It doesn't matter," he said, his tongue growing heavy but his thoughts still clear.

"You drink like a fish. Some of the stuff I learned was cool. Do you know the stages of grief? If you want to get rid of it, you need to let go."

"Whatever."

"I watched footage from Cinq, you know, the propaganda I was allowed to see up there on the anniversary of the restoration. The celebrations, with your sister's memorial speech to the Earth governments, eternal peace, blah, blah. And they showed clips from the conquest to contrast them with this renewal programme they're going on about."

"It was the first parade by Cinq military. Treize would have loved it. But what happened back then was no conquest. It's called the rape of Cinq. They shouldn't celebrate it. They should keep it separate from what happened later."

"Your sister's better at politics than you. You aren't good at pretending. Treize... he sucked you dry," she said, leaning in to take the bottle off him. "That's almost empty. Is that what happened? You didn't like being a soldier. Why did you try to copy him then?"

"Quit digging around."

She set the bottle onto the floor between their feet. "There is a biodrome up on L3."

"A scrapheap," he threw in spitefully.

"It used to be nice, even half-finished. Because they were building it in modules, they could open part of it while construction was still ongoing. They'd brought in plants from Earth – flowers, grass, even trees. People loved it. There was a patch of forest that looked a bit like here, only smaller, you know? And there was a tropical section, with a beach and water and a wave-machine…"

It sank into him like hot lead, and he turned to her to see her look at him calmly.

"My mother took that picture. It's the only private picture I ever saw of him before I got here. She said that he was angry that she'd done it, and he ripped the recorder from her hands and tossed it into the water. He made it look like a joke, an accident, but it wasn't, and they had a row over it. She said he was terribly vain. He'd smeared pancake makeup over his stitches and scars so he could go swimming in spite of the doctors saying he shouldn't, and later he was running a fever because he'd caught an infection and some of the cuts had gone bad. She told me, much later, because I wanted to know why she kept looking at this picture all the time, just like you."

Zechs felt his skin burn. There was a dragging pain in his chest, a dull throbbing in his head, and he felt hollow and heavy, as if filled with molten metal. Zero was there, enough to keep him aware, whether he wanted it or not.

"I can't talk to anyone else about this stuff," she said.

"Talk to Une," he said, feeling around for something, anything to make it go away.

A small sneer pulled at her lips. "Sure, wouldn't she just love that?"

"She saved your life."

"She saved your ass and her career. She doesn't give a damn-"

He got up and switched the projector off. The image disappeared.

_Like fairydust, _he thought, or the _Baba Yaga's skull lights... Before me light, and darkness behind me... No, no, no, you turned it on it's head, the wizard of OZ – you delved into the darkness on your big old mortar, and you blew it up in a blaze of fire and glory and rivers of blood, but it wasn't a fairytale, we weren't charmed, and now there's light, so much light, when I only want to sleep._

He felt ill. Zero was roiling in his mind and making him tingle from head to toe. A deep, throbbing ache pulsed in his head, and he felt as if his eyes would pop from his skull any moment. A little unsteady, he leaned against the sofa. "I think I'll go for a walk."

"Is it true that he had her image on his computer screen? Was it because she saved his life?"

Zechs turned and started to walk, focusing on the door, the handle, the way it creaked when he pressed it down, the cool metal around which his fingers curled, the smells of he vestibule…

_Like Vasilisa, hoping the wolves and skulls won't see me. In fairytales, we must never look back. But I have to, and my wolves won't be appeased with bread, or soothed with... whatever it is they want, I don't have it._

The dusk of the old house provided salvation from the agonising clarity in his head, undimmed by drink because it was brought about by the system in his mind, the tendrils that had grown into every nerve of his body and shook him, merciless and unrelenting, preventing his thoughts from clouding over until he thought he could watch himself go crazy.

From behind him, he heard Marimaia's voice, and he guessed that she had followed and stood in the door of the library. "At least," she said, "you knew he loved you."

Xxx

**Interlude 9 – Thawing Ice**

xxx

The river was carrying floats of ice and knots of debris on its back – treetrunks, thick nests of broken branches and old reeds. The water was brown and fast, the current swirling at the edges, but even now Zechs knew a few quiet pools where the fishing was good.

When he returned from his morning ride, a bag full of fish tied to the saddle, his hair still wet and heavy from a swim in the icy river, he heard shouting from upstairs. Pulling off his boots by the entrance to the house, he made out Treize's voice, sharp and angry, his tone clipped, accusing and staccato-fast. He had a lot to say, and Zechs strained to understand, but the heavy doors made it difficult. He wondered, in passing, whether his capability to speak Russian would ever match Treize's sharp tongue, but when Treize was done at last, Zechs heard a woman replying. He was startled to recognise the voice of Treize's mother, upset but not angry, still composed enough to talk. Treize fired off a snappy retort, and then the doors banged open, and he stormed out.

Zechs leaned back into the alcove by the front door, and watched him dash across the upper hallway with long strides. A moment after that, water was running in the bathroom at the end of the corridor.

xxx

In her room, Madame was sitting in her chair, her back straight, her hands resting in her lap. She gazed out of the window, across the meadows where patches of black and whispers of green start showing through the snow. She still wore her morning gown of quilted black silk, and she was slowly plaiting her hair into a long, heavy braid.

Zechs knelt by her side and hugged her.

She laid her hands on his hair and stroked gently, once, letting her warm palms rest on his head.

"As you shout, the echo shouts back," Zechs said into the stillness. "He'll shut up soon enough." He glanced up, and she smiled at him. Here eyes were red-rimmed.

"Mama, if there's anything I should know..."

"Do not worry." She sIowly combed through his hair. Zechs felt her tracing a blessing onto his brow; then she held her hand out to him. He kissed it and left the room. When he closed the door, he saw her kneel awkwardly before the icon. She pulled a small silk kerchief from the pocket of her gown to cover her head, and then she folded her hands to pray. He heard her voice, a low, cool murmur – far from the mindless fervour of desperation or pleading – and only then did he see the open vodka flagon and the half-empty crystal tumbler on her desk.

xxx

Treize was dressing his stitches when Zechs stepped into his room. He'd taken care of himself, every day, with iron discipline. He took handfuls of pills without complaint. He went to bed early and didn't drink much because he had been told that it would impede healing.

As if, Zechs thought, he was absorbed by one goal only – to get back to being a soldier. He paused just inside, folding his arms as he leaned against the door and pushed it shut with his back.

"Don't start," Treize ground out.

"She's not one of your cadets," Zechs said. "She's your mother."

"She should have stopped you," Treize retorted fiercely.

"I don't want to go over this again."

"But I do. You had no right to do this. You should-"

"Yes?"

"You should have waited! Had some faith in me, asked what I thought about it!"

"I knew what you'd say. So I made my choice, for myself."

Treize tossed a spent, sticky gauze pad on the floor. "You couldn't," he burst out. "You haven't got the right information to make that kind of choice. And they could have turned you down if they'd-"

"Says who?"

Treize shot him a glare.

Zechs shrugged. "Well, if you don't want to talk about it..."

"Don't try to goad me."

Zechs pushed himself off the wall. "Why are you so mad about it?"

"You haven't been brought up in this tradition." Treize tugged hard at another pad and yelped. "Shit..."

"You mean I'm not one of you? Not a real Khushrenada?"

Treize glanced up at Zechs, his eyes angry. "That's low, and you know it. If you must hear it, I'll spell it out. You have choices I never had. Why are you throwing them away? Why are you throwing your life away, as if it was worth nothing? It's... it's a sin."

A spark of curiosity gleamed in Zechs' gaze. "You believe that?"

"I believe in living!" Treize snapped.

Zechs stepped closer so that he loomed over Treize, who resumed his work, tearing off gauze and putting fresh dressings on oozing cuts and stitches. "Come off it, Tre. My father would be turning in his grave, but he was wrong, wrong to leave us undefended. I won't be like that. The people who gave the orders to burn Cinq, they'll pay. And I won't be waiting again. I'll be able to back you up."

"The system doesn't work like that."

"We'll see."

Treize brushed the pack of gauze and antiseptic ointment off his lap and got up to face Zechs, almost nose to nose; it seemed to irritate him that, at just fourteen, Zechs matched his height. "Why the hell do you have to be like that? Self-destructive, stupid, idiotic!"

"Then perhaps you shouldn't have bothered!"

Treize's face turned from sickly pale to flecky red, and he drew a quick, tight breath as if to calm himself. "You could do other things. Beautiful things."

Zechs could smell the pungent stink of pain, and of stale vodka, garlic and antibiotics on Treize's breath. He didn't budge. "So that anyone with a gun can trample over me again? Or should I've come begging to you for help?"

"You-"

"I hate being helpless, as I was in Cinq. And you need to wash your mouth out, you stink."

"What?" Treize blinked, then punched him on the shoulder. His fist, big, hard and bony, hit with surprising force, almost knocking Zechs off balance. "You were six years old!"

Zechs reddened, his eyes narrowing. He pushed back, and Treize winced. "Old enough. I saw news footage from L3. That kid with a rocket launcher..."

Treize sagged a little, the colour slowly draining from his face. "That... was not in the official news."

"I used a scanner to find one of the rebels' pirate transmitters," Zechs snapped. "It's not that hard. They come and go, you know? You can't shut _them _up."

A shadow of pain passed over Treize's face, and for a moment, he looked faint. Zechs reached out, but Treize stepped back and crouched awkwardly to gather up his bandages. "Anyone with a gun," he said, the anger fading from his voice, "People like my unit. What was it, history repeating itself?" He dragged himself up and settled on the bed again. "It wasn't combat. Those people weren't trained as we are. They had those old mobile suits, a lot of determination, and not much else. Perhaps you're right, you shouldn't be helpless against people like me."

Zechs stared at him. Treize held his gaze, but his fingers, covering the white gauze in his lap, were trembling, just enough for Zechs to see.

Zechs folded his arms, his clenched right hand resting over his heart. It hurt in there, and he wanted to claw in and hold it still, just still... "They knew what they were fighting for. Did you? I mean, beyond your career, what were you defending, Tre?"

Treize's fingers bunched the gauze. "Once you pull on this uniform, you don't have much choice between carrying out your orders or listening to your conscience... like my father in Cinq. And that kid with the rocket launcher... I didn't want that to be you."

Zechs turned away, his gaze drifting outside, rising into the pale blue sky. A few clouds floated past. Somewhere a lark was singing. He felt his eyes burn, hot and dry.

Treize broke open another cellophane packet. "You could have the world at your feet," he said quietly. "Earth, the Universe... all yours, with your gifts..."

"The Universe? How about you? Are you all mine?"

Treize picked at the wrapping, his gaze downcast. "That's not fair."

Zechs cleared his throat. "I made up my mind."

Treize looked up at him, and for the first time Zechs could not read him – his eyes cold, his expression angry but composed, his face flushed an unhealthy red, and when he spoke, he sounded rough and frosty, "I thought you were smarter than that."

Zechs turned back abruptly, meeting his glare. "Don't try that, it's stupid."

"Oh? And you, letting yourself be manipulated into this... this... idiocy?"

"Nobody-"

"Can't you see? Dammit, Milliardo. They made that choice for you, my mother, my family – it's a convenient way of dealing with their problems."

"You mean they wanted me out of the way?"

Treize bit his lip. Zechs raised his chin, a small, defiant gesture. "Your mother said you would say that. Do you really think I can't have my own mind? If this suits them too, it doesn't matter to me."

"To me it does! Cinq is a long time ago. Memories are tricky, better or worse than the real thing. You only have one life-"

"Tre, you're a damn hypocrite. How about your life?"

"My life!" Treize slammed his fist against the wall. "This is my father's life. The life my family choose for me!"

"You can change it," Zechs snapped.

"Can I now! Are you telling me I should tear off my uniform and go back to ploughing my fields?"

"Why not?"

"Because," Treize said, "everything has a price. This house, the estate, what's in my accounts, the reputation of my family, our connections – it comes at a cost, and I'm paying now. I'm trying to make the best of it, but you don't need this!"

"Because I'm not part of it?"

"No, but because a good soldier has no doubts," Treize flung at him.

Zechs turned pale. "Then are you a good soldier, Tre?"

"Yes! Dammit, yes."

Zechs swallowed hard. "Whatever. This... it's not about you."

"You want revenge. You can't make peace with guns."

For a moment they were looking at each other, neither knowing the other. Zechs broke the sudden stillness, his voice brittle. "Then what are you doing, Tre?"

xxx


	10. Chapter 10

**Episode 10 – For a big ship, a big voyage.**1

xxx

"Funny," Marimaia said when they sat in the dining room to eat their dinner. "How you try to cope and it doesn't work."

"It's annoying," he snapped.

"What?"

"You, and your ideas." He tapped his temple. "It's all in here."

"It's not like I could go places," she retorted.

He thought that perhaps she was vengeful because he wasn't interested, wondering whether she'd tried to flirt, in a strange, intense way, with her tantrums and open warfare. Yet whatever she did, she couldn't reach deep enough to really, truly hurt.

_Like a fly,_ he thought uncharitably, _or a gnat… But you were right, Tre – age and treachery wins out any time over youth and enthusiasm._

For a moment, he felt sorry for her, in a wistful, angry way, almost wishing her to succeed.

_And what would it change?_

He reached for the flask of coffee in the middle of the table – and paused. Marimaia was looking out of the window, her hands in her lap, her expression blank.

Before Zechs could do anything, she said, "I hate it here. But I hate Mars too. I won't go back there."

He poured the steaming brew, filling her cup first. "We'll be here until the mandatory leave is up; then you'll be posted back."

She didn't reply.

Zechs drank, burned his mouth and swore under his breath. For a while, he sat watching the steam curl from his drink, and listening into himself.

He didn't break the silence until she made to get up. "Look, I come here to have some peace. I like my memories."

"Even if they hurt?" Her voice was oddly childlike, making him wonder whether she was faking it, and – for the first time – whether anyone had ever sung for her.

_At least I wasn't alone..._

He brushed the thought aside, where it stayed, nagging him. "It's all or nothing," he said. "They offered me treatment for what they call combat stress."

She sat back down. "So? Is it stress?"

"It's a lot of stuff, just not that. Combat never stressed me. I refused."

"You didn't trust them."

"No."

She drew her shoulders up. "I wouldn't refuse. I can't sleep without pills."

"I think..." He leaned forward, seeking her gaze. "Look, there isn't a thing we can change in the past, and I'm not going to preach how everything gets better if we pull ourselves together. It's not true. Nothing gets better. Nothing stops hurting. It drops for a while, and then it bites you when you don't expect it. It's worse every time, and if you see it coming, you can't help it. If not you, they'd have found someone else to pin that invasion on."

She stared at him, her eyes narrow, her face chalky white, and he saw for the first time that she had inherited even Treize's freckles. "I don't know... I feel nothing when I think about it. But when I try to remember my mother... my family... It's years since I've seen a picture. Now their faces are just... patches. Blind spots."

_But I remember. Everything, crystal-clear. I am lucky, am I not?_

"Would you like to see pictures?" The words jumped off his tongue before reason could hold them back, and he saw her eyes fill up even as she pressed her lips together firmly. A strange calm began to suffuse him. He would break rules and throw protocols overboard. He would upset Preventer security and scare a few more people – but, he thought with a strange kind of amusement – there was nothing they could do to stop him, and no punishment that could be worse than that he was living with. Relief welled through him, along with a wave of dizziness. He felt light inside, and then he knew what had changed so suddenly. He groped for the system but he found only silence. "It's gone," he murmured.

"What?"

He rose unsteadily to his feet. He'd been intoxicated before, in a sharp, conscious way, but now he felt very, dizzyingly drunk. "My headache," he said, touching his temple as if to make sure, "It's finally gone."

And suddenly, overwhelmingly, he just wanted to live.

xxx

Zechs had fallen asleep in Treize's bed, Zero buried so deeply beneath the layers of his mind that – for the first time since he'd plugged himself into the system – he couldn't detect it. Not the faintest buzz. He slept and dreamed of Treize singing into his ear. He saw himself as a boy of six, hand in hand with a little girl, chasing waves along a white, gleaming beach, and he knew it was Marimaia, but then it was Relena who looked up and smiled at him. And he felt Treize's body pressing against his own with an intensity that drove tears to his eyes and made him clutch the sheets against his stomach.

When he drifted back to awareness, he realised that he was crying, the pillow wet under his cheek, his belly sticky. He didn't have the strength, or the will to stop. It felt sad and strangely good to let go.

Outside, the dawn of a clear summer morning rose over the dark line of the woods, with the scents of dew-soaked grass and the first hint of the day's heat. The room – Treize's room – smelled of fresh paint and old wood, with a trace of dust and mice. Zechs rolled onto his back and lay in silence for some time, staring at the white-painted ceiling while the patches on his stomach cooled and dried.

From downstairs echoed the clap of a closing door.

xxx

"I was watching the sun rise," Marimaia said to him later, when she joined him in the library. She was clutching a cup between her palms as if to warm them, in spite of the heat gathering outside. After realising she was missing, he'd made coffee, eaten and settled in the library to look at old photos. He hadn't bothered chasing after her. In the wilderness beyond the estate, she could go nowhere, and the village was alien to her.

In his mind, there was silence, dark and sweet. He barely believed it, and he fiercely clung to it, enjoying, drifting, deeply grateful for every sliver of it.

"What are these?" she asked, nodding at his chest.

He touched the four small metal squares, dangling from a leather thong around his neck. "Dogtags. Two are mine, two belonged to Treize."

Marimaia drew her shoulders up. "I want to live," she said, her voice quiet, without drama. "But it's so... hard. And I shouldn't like you. If I like you, I _am_ like you."

"You'll never be like me."

_Nobody should ever be like me, or like the other five, and if I could, I would undo all that research and wipe this kind of knowledge from people's minds. Some things should never be known..._

She bit her lip. "Perhaps we need to let them die. Treize, my mother... everyone else. Perhaps then we can live."

Zechs shook his head. "I can't do that."

xxx

**Interlude 10 – Like Friends, Like Strangers** 2,3

xxx

Zechs showed the guards outside Treize's office his identification and marching orders. The office wasn't the pompous suite in the main building of the Specials headquarters but two small rooms buried in the bowels of the underground bunkers. The steel-plated door stood slightly open, and music drifted into the grey concrete corridor. Whilst one of the men carefully examined the documents and the other one watched Zechs, he gazed through the gap. When the man finally handed him the papers back and moved aside to let him pass, Zechs stepped in quietly and pulled the door shut behind him.

The room was filled with muted, greenish light. Treize sat at a large desk facing the door, but he had turned towards a large computer screen at one end of the table, where a long list of white letters was scrolling slowly across the dark background. The desk was covered in papers and bathed in a pool of brightness by a lamp with a green glass shade. One corner of the table had been cleared for a tray set with china and silver, black bread, and a field-grey plastic thermos caddy. A cup stood amid brown-stained rings on a sheet of paper, and an apple stalk lay on the saucer.

"Lieutenant Marquise reporting for duty... sir."

Treize smiled. He was in fatigues and field-grey tee that outlined his trimly muscled shape. "Stand at ease, Lieutenant."

Zechs relaxed his stance and tried to keep his breathing even. It had been way too long, he thought, annoyed that his mind should wander that way, but he had found it impossible to focus on anything else the moment he touched down and climbed out of his jet.

Treize gestured at a second chair by the door. "I'm glad you're here. Come, sit down. Eat something."

"I've eaten at the mess hall when I got here." Zechs pulled the chair close and sat opposite Treize, the corner of the desk between them. "It was worse than the slop they serve at the base. Is that intentional? To remind people that this isn't a holiday?"

"Maybe." Treize's eyes were redrimmed yet bright and intense as he leaned forward and quickly laid his hand on Zechs'. "Milliardo."

Zechs bit his lip. That single touch set him on fire, and Treize's apparent calm irritated him. "What exactly do you want me to do? Shuffle your paperwork?"

A dimple appeared on Treize's cheek, and the slant of his eyes became more pronounced as his smile widened. "Still cross?"

"I didn't go through cadet school and combat training to lick your boots. Three years wasted! Do you always have to have things your way?"

"Come now, it's a step up. I'm just waiting for your promotion to be rubberstamped."

"Promotion! You know what they're going to say! And I don't do politics. I'm a pilot. For heaven's sake, Tre, stop gloating!"

Treize leaned back and spun his office chair around, like a boy on a funfair ride. "Politics. It's like turning the bullets, and get others to fire them."

"I'm not interested."

"No? In the bullets, or the firing? Do you prefer blanks?"

There was a moment of consternation, before Zechs slammed his flat hand onto the table. "You ruined my career before I could get started. I'm your teacaddy here."

Treize shook his head. "Things aren't always what they appear to be. Sometimes, it pays to be patient, so you can have the last laugh."

"Tre, quit being cryptic. What do you want me to do?"

Treize leaned forward and lightly touched the screen. The list faded away. On the dark surface, an image bloomed to life, a technical drawing formed by a profusion of thin green, red and yellow lines. The shape of a large machine, almost human in its form. "I want you to run this project." Treize touched the corner of the drawing. The model lifted off the screen until it spun, three-dimensional and tangible, slowly between him and Zechs. "I need someone I can trust. Someone who can back me up."

Zechs raised his hand. The moment he brushed through one of the coloured lines, the model stopped, and the detail enlarged as if seen through a lens. "You trust me?"

"Yes. If you keep doing this, you'll be able to see every screw and washer."

Zechs looked at Treize through the transparent shape between them. "This is a black box op?"

Treize's smile was still there, but his eyes were cool. "I've shaken the Foundation's war chest a little and found that it rattled. The funds come from the maintenance budget."

"You haggle like a merchant."

"I _am_ a merchant."

"And proud of it?"

"Why not?"

"What's noble about that?"

Treize laughed. "Where, noble prince, do you go to borrow money?"

Zechs blushed deeply. "You used my crashing of the testcraft."

"Only a fool refuses an opportunity."

A small, heavy silence fell, accentuating the discord that their argument had struck. Zechs gazed at the neural image of the machine, before looking back at Treize. "This is a gundam. That's why it took you so long. One year on L3, to get this."

Treize leaned back, and Zechs could see his features cool until the smile was only a shell. "It wasn't planned. I just-"

"I get it. You grabbed an opportunity. Perhaps someone else created that opportunity for you, don't you think? How did you do it?"

"Microdots, glued to my dogtags. It was easy."

"I mean, how did you get this?"

Treize sniffed. "A friend who isn't friendly anymore."

"Was that friend a woman?"

"Milliardo. Miliusha." Treize sounded somewhat strained. "Does it matter?"

Zechs hesitated, before shaking his head. "I don't know. Never mind."

There was a long pause, until Treize's voice brought him back from his study of the model. "My mother..."

Zechs met his gaze. "She fell asleep. She wasn't in pain."

Treize rose and turned to rub his face with both hands. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have sent you, but after Lake Victoria I couldn't get away from work."

"She was good to me. I'm glad I could say my farewells. She said that she loved both of us, and she sends you her blessing."

In the pause that followed, Zechs realised that the tune was repeating itself – Moscow Evenings, sung by a man with a tenderness that touched him oddly.

"Tre."

"Hm."

"What did you say to her, back then?"

Treize let his arms drop, his fingers clenching lightly at his sides. His voice was rough when he answered, "That I'd never forgive her for what she'd done. I don't want her blessing." Abruptly, he went to the adjacent bedroom, to return with a bottle and two tumblers.

He clonked the bottle onto a stack of papers, filled one of the glasses to the brim and raised it, glaring at Zechs through the clear liquid. The sharp smell of vodka mingled with the scent of ripe apples and stale coffee. "One of the men smuggled this in," he said. "From home. Self-made, from the best potatoes our soil gave this year. Na sdorovye, my friend." He tipped the stuff down his throat in one go, nodded at Zechs, and went to bed, leaving the door open.

Zechs heard his boots thump on the floor and the creaking of the mattress as Treize dropped, then the music stopped. For a while, he listened into the sudden stillness. He thought that Treize would always go to sleep like felled, from one moment to the next, unlike Zechs who would toss and turn until exhaustion would overcome his restlessness.

He pushed the bottle and glasses aside and moved to sit on Treize's deskchair. It felt hard and uncomfortable, too low for his long limbs, but his attention was soon absorbed by the model again. He could zoom in, making each part, each wire and screw visible, and open neatly categorised sets of comprehensive annotations referring to materials, calculations and predicted performance data. It was, he realised, the ultimate combat machine – not a robot but an extension of the pilot. The human mind in battle mode, ancient instincts enhanced to perfection.

In the hour before the wake-up bugle, tiredness and reason won over excitement at last. And when he stretched out on a cot propped against one side of the room, he wondered whether Treize had done the right thing after all by requesting the transfer.

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Большо́му кораблю́ — большо́е пла́вание. - For a large ship, a large voyage. (Mock: Большо́му кораблю́ — больша́я торпе́да. For a large ship, a large torpedo)  
2 Eating like friends, doing business like strangers.  
3 This is set after GW LA1 Burning (the assault on the Lake Victoria school).


	11. Chapter 11

**Episode 11 – From fire to flame**.1

xxx

He lifted the arm off the ancient record player when he heard the jeep arriving. He closed the account ledger he'd been scrutinising, and left it on the sofa as he went to answer the door. In passing, he took his sidearm from his coat pocket before opening the front door.

Une, for once not in uniform, tilted her head and smiled at him. "Hi."

She looked different in a plain, bright blue summer dress and an elegant light dust coat, her hair in a single long plait draped over her shoulder. She carried a large Preventer issue holdall.

_As if the last fifteen years hadn't happened..._

"Come in." He took the bag off her and stepped aside to let her pass.

"Not surprised?" she asked as he helped her out of her coat.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and draped the coat over his arm. "Should I be?"

She laughed. "No, probably not. You look well."

He gave her a slow smile. "I'm alright. You?"

She waved him off. "The usual. I think I'm giving up now. I decided to spend a few days visiting to make the best of it."

"Ah." He walked ahead, up the stairs and opened the door to the room that had belonged to Treize's father. It had been painted white, like the rest of the house, and furnished with a large, modern bed, desk and chair – all covered in dust sheets – and lined beige curtains to darken the room in summer and keep out the cold in winter. There was an inbuilt wardrobe with mirrored sliding doors, and an on-suite bathroom. The window offered an open view over the long driveway in front of the house and the gundamium shard in the hazy distance.

"Nice," she said, "if a bit bare, but I always liked coming here. At home it's too busy, my old folks organising the harvest, the house full of people, not a second of peace."

He put the holdall on the bed. "You called at your place?"

She shrugged. "For tea. Of course they're proud, but my mother keeps telling me it's time to marry and have children, and my father doesn't understand why I can't share a lot of detail with them. Well, they made their life without me. I just disturb their rhythm."

"You never know." Zechs opened the window to let the warm summer breeze in. "I'll get you some fresh bedlinens, but there's no decent food in the house."

"I tried to phone ahead."

"The receiver's off the hook. You could have called the base."

She took his hand, squeezing it briefly. "I know. Well, it's nice to be here."

"Really?"

"Yes. I also brought some work."

"Sure."

And then he heard voices, laughing, and the clapping of the front door. A woman's steps – heeled shoes on bare floorplanks – up the stairs, and the soft scent of lilac wafting into the room.

He turned.

Spreading her arms, Relena smiled. "Brother."

xxx

Dinner consisted of fried fresh trout and white bread one of the men from the airstrip had bought in the village, vodka and gherkins from the larder , and coffee with cream. At Zechs' request, Marimaia had joined them, but she kept silent, ignoring their greetings, her face without expression as she ate. Une talked about the weather, her flight, the Mars project. Relena quizzed Zechs about how things were at the estate. She sat close to him, leaning against him now and then, and he could feel how fragile she seemed. It was a strange contrast to the calm confidence she radiated. He said little, sensing the system buzzing quietly in his mind. It hadn't been there for a few days, as if to take a deep breath, and now it was back, tingling along his nerves, sharpening his senses and making him afraid of himself.

"Marimaia," Relena said into the awkward lull between coffee and vodka, "how are you?"

Marimaia rose. "I am finished." She took her plate and cup and left.

Relena turned to Zechs. "What should I say to her?"

"I don't know. There won't be much to share," he said dryly.

She nodded. "I didn't want to be rude. Anyway, I'll stay with Ann, so you don't get paranoid about security. Now I want to see whether this was really all you've got in your kitchen."

xxx

When Relena had left the room, Une caught Zechs' arm before he could follow. She picked up a leather portfolio she had wedged against the back of her chair. "Can we have a quiet word?"

They went into the library. Zechs turned on her the moment the door fell shut behind them. "Where is Relena's security detail?"

"I am her detail. She wanted to see you, I needed to come here, it seemed a good opportunity."

"You never wasted time on friendly visits."

"Perhaps I should." Une looked at the chaos in the room and smiled softly. "He'd love this. Do you remember that Easter after he'd come back from L3? It was dreadful, a terrible meatmarket, and all he had to say to me was how much he'd missed you, and how shocked he was that you'd enlisted. He looked ill when he talked about it, as if the life had been ripped out of him."

"He wasn't happy, but I was right." Zechs sat down by the cold stove and gestured at the opposing chair. "He had your picture on his screen. He loved you too."

"He was never above using misinformation." Une opened the portfolio on the low table between them.

Zechs tried not to stare at it. "So what about your painter?"

She gave him a resigned smile. "You were right; it's pointless. He said I was looking for someone else. That I was never really with him, all the time we spent together. I thought about it, and... you know, sometimes it hurts so bad, I can't... I mean, there are moments when I wonder how something can hurt so bad and not kill you. I didn't want to be dishonest, so I packed up and left. I have work to do anyway."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

"And that?" He nodded at the papers.

Her smile faded. "The results of your re-tests."

"And you wish you'd never talked me into taking that last set."

"You said you felt better. I-"

"We," he cut in, "hoped it would give us a clue to what was happening. So did it?" Without waiting for her answer, he slid the a thin, spiralbound brochure and a fat, black folder out of the file. The brochure had a clear plastic cover labelled with the patient code he knew by heart, and it contained a set of documents covered in columns of small-print decimals and text. He read in silence, running his index finger along the figures. When he laid the brochure back on the table, he was pale. "No surprises then. Time to sort my affairs.

"There has to be something," she said. "Some break-"

"We knew the risk," he interrupted her.

_It didn't matter so much back then, it seemed such a remote issue. And now the system's dying, and it's killing my brain too. If I'd allow it to run riot, it would expand, simply replacing my... what is it we call Self, anyway? My body would live if I'd not suffocate Zero. But not me. It wouldn't be me anymore, just a killing machine, the Perfect Soldier. How ironic that Yuy never quite got there. I didn't even have to try too hard. _

There was a brief silence, before he laid his hand on hers. Her fingers felt limp. He squeezed them briefly and firmly. "Funny," he said, a small smile curving his lips.

She glanced at him, her eyes dark and unhappy. "Funny?"

"It doesn't feel that bad."

She gripped his hand. "Yes, it does."

He shook his head. "For the first time in years, I have moments when I can relax without drinking, or pumping myself full of tranquilizers. When I don't need to silence it, or worry what happens if it takes over." He studied her. "What else is there, Ann?"

The silence grew long, until she glanced up to meet his gaze. "For some years now I've been co-ordinating a covert cleanup operation."

He settled back onto his place, his expression a mix of apprehension, reluctant curiosity, and resignation towards whatever she would tell him.

She drew a deep, sharp breath. "I started this just after the Libra disaster. I wasn't sure why at the time, but now..."

Another break, uncomfortably heavy. He waited her out.

"They found the pilot's capsule," she said, her voice trembling just a little.

He felt as if she'd hit him with a brick on the head. A surge of nausea that made him sick and faint; the ground seemed to drop from beneath him, and he was falling, spinning, sounds dripping into his brain as if through thick cotton wool. For a moment, he felt like passing out. Instincts, honed and enhanced by Zero, won out, and he set the cup down. "How?" he murmured hoarsely.

"A sweeper unit found it. They didn't realise what it was."

He covered his eyes with his hand. His head was buzzing, but it wasn't the system, and he felt ill with weakness. "I saw his machine blow up..."

"The capsule cracked as the machine exploded."

"You ran DNA tests?"

"There is no doubt."

He leaned forward, his head lolling, and drew a breath that sounded like a gasp or a sob. "Where..."

"All the debris has been shipped, over the years, to the old Siberian base. The capsule is there as well."

"You want me to identify..."

Une touched his arm. "I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I need your technical expertise. It's all in the file."

Zechs blinked and straightened. He opened the lid of the black folder, took the first sheet and began to read. Une watched a slight tremor run through his hands, making the paper shake. "Sabotage," he murmured, "and treason?" He glanced up at her.

"The shield of Treize's machine," Une said quietly, "was never meant to hold. And Zero went into meltdown along with the steerage the moment he took the first hit. He lost it when he most needed it."

"Perhaps he turned it off. He could be stupid like that."

_Hidebound by ideas of honour... perhaps, in that last fight, there was one of those moments, a flash of conscience, like when you let pilot five go after that stupid duel at sabres__2__... but no, that had been calculation too, had it not? I wish I knew._

Une shook her head. "He told me that he was hoping to return home, with you, once it was all over."3

Slowly, Zechs leafed through the sheaf of documents – handwritten notes, printed material, data sheets and tables, diagrams, photographs, technical drawings annotated in Treize's handwriting, and his own remarks scrawled in the margins. "When I crashed the testcraft," he murmured, "it was greed. They'd substituted lower-spec materials, and the thing went down."4

"We have evidence that it was more than that. He wasn't going to die to save you – he was sure you'd be good enough to hold your own – or to satisfy Chang's idea of honour. He went out to win that fight and end the war in that last battle, but someone didn't like that."

"How did you do it?"

"In that chaos, and later during the clean-up operations, nobody thought to ask, but I thought it better that none of the people involved knew of the others. As far as they were concerned, they were just cleaning up wreckage to restore normal space traffic."

He paused, admiring her composure, her unstinting ability to keep a cool head even when the world around her came crashing down. "Maxwell? Is that why you parked him on Mars for some time?"

"I used some of the salvage crews, including his. I then had the material examined and tested at some of our labs. I trawled the archives, dug up the approval and supply paperwork. It took years, but we have time."

"So you read law?"

"That," she said evenly, with just a hint of sarcasm, "was a sign of our civilian re-education. In any case, it was only to update my understanding of the military code. We may believe it, but things don't change that much."

He shook his head. "Ann, what's the point of this investigation? All this effort... it won't bring him back."

"Some things must not be forgotten. The men responsible for this will be brought to justice."

"Justice, or revenge?"

"That might depend on where you stand." She laid her hand on top of his. "And sometimes they might be too close to tell apart. I need your help to finish this."

He met her gaze and thought that this was the woman Treize had trusted when he didn't want to get his hands dirty. That he had used her, and that she knew it. He wondered whether her faith in Treize had been blind to his flaws, and how so much steely determination and restless energy could find room in such a slight and pretty frame.

"You won't get much support in public."

She squared her shoulders and smoothed her dress. "Twelve men have been indicted. A dirty dozen. There will be a trial at Preventers Headquarters. They are being brought in as we speak, in a concerted effort. None of them will slip through that net."

He understood – she had set this up as a covert operaton; people would be snatched from wherever they were found – work, home, the street – by Preventers operatives that looked like civilians and would use any means to complete their assignment. It made him feel uncomfortable, but perhaps, he thought, she was right, and the end mattered more than the means. He shook his head. "A Preventers panel judging civilians?"

"We are a special foce and not part of the military, therefore the Military Justice Code doesn't apply. We are authorised to dispense justice in special cases. But you know that anyway."

"And Preventers bases are not part of the Earth Sphere jurisdiction," he finished. "You might as well try them on Mars."

Une gave him a tight smile. "I was thinking about that. Because of our position, the Earth Sphere Special Situations Act allows us to have a closed court. There will only be three panel members. I will be chairing; Lucrezia and Yuy will join me. You and Chang will be our witnesses. It will all be over in a day."

"Yuy? And Chang?"

Une said nothing.

Zechs pulled back his hand. It crossed his mind that the Earth Sphere government had underestimated her, thought her a puppet, the General's teamaker, and how badly they had misjudged her formidable energy and wits. In a strange, distorted way, she reminded him of Treize.

He closed the file. "And then?"

"They will earn what they sowed," she said quietly. "And it will have nothing to do with Relena."

"I see." It was a foregone conclusion, he thought, scripted like the rest of it, and they both knew what it meant. There was a long silence, until he nodded. "Fine." He met her gaze, alert and probing. "But I want something in return."

"Yes?"

"I know you cannot change the law, and I know... look, I want her to stay. For a while at least, to see if it works. And if it does, perhaps she should be paroled. It would be a nice touch, don't you think? Sympathy points for my sister. An olive branch for the colonies."

"And a few very powerful and very angry people in the pro-Earth faction." Une shook her head. "Even if I'd conisder, she'd need a guarantor."

He gave her a thin smile. "And with my rapsheet, I can't be one."

"There are limits to what I can do," Une said regretfully. "I'd give a lot to clear your record, Milliardo. I'd even say it would be possible, in time. But I cannot recommend her for parole."

"I have no time. Come now, Ann. I'm not stupid, and I'm not taken in by tantrums or flirting. But if you want to bury her, you should have the guts to kill her."

Pink flecks bloomed on Une's cheeks. "It was the best... the only way to save her life."

"And now you can improve on that. I guarantee you that I won't take bullshit from anyone."

"Not even from her." Une glanced at the black file. "Or me. Make me understand."

"It's her heritage too, isn't it? The perfect link." He got up and glanced out of the window. In the distance, the shard of gundamium shimmered in the sun.

"And Dorothy's lawsuit against you?"

He shrugged. "She's been trying to contest Treize's will for years. My lawyers are better than hers."

"It's not about lawyers bankrupting you. The Catalonias are still a well-connected family. They would find out."

"Let them. She should at least be able to use her name."

"Barton?"

"Khushrenada."

"Do you know what that would do to Relena's position? The Catalonias have a lobby that could crush her. Some people are fighting like dogs over Treize's name, and they all claim that they're right, that he's their hero, and they're the ones to make his dreams come true. To others, he's still the devil. The press would besiege Relena – and you. And even if Marimaia wasn't tempted, there'd be security issues for her."

"I think," he said softly, "that depends on how it's handled."

"The truth is," Une said, closing her eyes and rubbing her temple in slow circles, "that the Catalonias haven't forgotten that Relena foiled their war, and it doesn't help that Dorothy's heading their clan now. It's personal, isn't it?"

He gave her a thin smile. "Hell hath no fury... you know that old chestnut. She didn't manage to play me, and she didn't like it. But someone appeased the Catalonias by handing them a contract to supply Preventers with equipment."

Une stared at him. "Someone's got to do it," she said ambiguously. "And it keeps them quiet as long as they don't feel provoked. They dig behind the scenes, but it's manageable." A small pause, then, "Milliardo, she... Marimaia can't own anything here. She won't get a work permit."

"I thought about that. She could get a residential visum – I think my name should be good enough for that. I was thinking of putting some of the estate's income into trust for her. I'll keep what's mine, but she'd be able to draw an income and learn something to earn a living."

Une shook her head. "It won't work."

"Try it. I'll be in touch if it doesn't, and then you can do as you see fit. In the meanwhile, I'll prepare for your tribunal."

There was another pause, longer and warmer this time. He could feel the stillness of the summery room ebb and flow, until Une said, "You and Relena, you're in a position to reconcile Earth and the colonies. You've negotiated-"

"As you did."

She tilted her head in acknowledgement. "-and you've led Whitefang. They'll remember. They'll recall that Treize pushed for war when you didn't."

"That is not true."

"Perceptions count. He was careful."

"To set the scene, move everyone around like chesspieces? What was it, a plan?"

She shrugged. "Plans, dreams... sometimes dreams turn into plans. Treize was an strategist and quick to act. He always saw more than anybody else, didn't he? Possibilities, choices, opportunities. Don't be bitter about it."

There was a brief, heavy silence, before he sought her gaze. "Tell me something, Ann."

He didn't use her name often. She did not flinch, but he watched a tiny flicker come and go in her eyes that were as dark and sharp as ever. "I will," she said, "If I can."

"When you took the hit for him, was that also staged?"

A slow smile curved her lips. "No. And I've never been so scared in my life."

xxx

**Interlude 11 – Fields of Glory**

xxx

Treize stepped out of the bedroom. Buttoning up his tunic, he glanced at Zechs who stood with his back to him in front of the model. He'd zoomed in and enlarged it so that it filled the room, its limbs extending beyond the walls, its body a web of lines and shimmering light. It was spinning slowly around Zechs, who had tied his hair into a ponytail and tucked it into the collar of his shirt.

"Aren't you tired?" Treize said quietly.

"No." Zechs turned to face him. "Why can't we just give the Colonies what they need?"

Treize held his gaze. Zechs read understanding and determination, and what he fiercely hoped was compassion, not pity.

"It isn't my decision to make," Treize replied. "My job... our job is to end this war as quickly as possible."

"Why are you fighting for the Foundation?"

Treize let his hands drop by his sides. "Because Earth is my home. And because it's the origin of everything we know. Even the Colonies cannot be without it."

"So we move from tricks to robbery. Those people, the Colonists, are they on your list too?"

"The list would become too long." Treize's tone was quiet and cool, drained of emotion.

"Most of them are civilians."

"The life of a few hundreds of thousands for billions on Earth."

Zechs shook his head. "Tre..."

"I'm sorry."

"Could have fooled me."

There was a long pause bevore Treize sat down behind his desk. "We don't have choices anymore."

Zechs sat opposite him, and for a moment they gazed at each other. "No," he said at last, "we don't."

xxx

Autumn was melting into winter. Treize – caught up in his work – still had the energy to grow restless. He was longing to go home to the estate, to watch winter settle in and make sure all was well, the harvest safely stored, the house taken care of. Zechs caught him studying the trading accounts of the estate that had been faxed to him – the only method to transmit the oldfashioned, handwritten ledger pages.

Treize gave him a smile, rolled the fax up and slipped it into the chestpocket of his tunic. "Let's go home for a few days."

Zechs set a flask of coffee down on Treize's desk, overloaded with papers and technical drawings. "So now you have time?"

"A little."

"And a plan?"

"Maybe." Treize watched Zechs pour coffee for both of them. "I signed your leave off, and I've taken a few days myself."

"I didn't ask for leave."

"I've arranged for us to stay at the dacha. The woodskeeper went to marry his girlfriend, so we'll have the place to ourselves."

"Tre-"

"And I have a gift for you."

"What?"

"If you want to find out, you'll have to come with me."

xxx

They'd taken Treize's jet although Zechs was piloting it. The flight was easy, and the transition from gloomy, wintry-wet Europe to the shimmering, frostbound Russian steppes felt, to Zechs, like the return to some magical past. He was relieved when they touched down at the small airstrip on the estate, and left the jet in the hands of the ground crew.

They changed into winter gear at the back of the corrugated metal shed that was the hangar. Thickly wadded trousers, jackets with overlong sleeves and backs, attached fur-mittens, furlined hoods, old-fashioned felt-boots would keep them warm. Their movements were hurried, driven by the freezing cold, but there was an edge of competition too, as if this was a military exercise.

"Done," Treize said, patting the webbing of his winter suit. His breath came in thick white puffs from his lips. "We should walk. The dacha isn't that far, and the jeep would just spook all the game."

Looking slightly frustratred, Zechs shrugged into the thick jacket of his winter uniform. "Don't you want to go to the house?"

"Why? It takes care of itself." Treize slung his holdall over his shoulder and gave Zechs a glittering smile. "Let's try this. I bet I'm fitter than you."

"You want a forced march? Now?" Zechs' tone was amused. He pressed the velcro flap over the zip of the suit jacket. Framed by the fur of the hood, his face was fresh and flushed from the cold.

Treize stared at him. Like a wolf at a rabbit, Zechs thought, shivering from the mix of cold hands and heat that flushed through him.

"You think you can beat me?" Treize smiled.

"I haven't just been hanging around HQ pushing pens."

Treize tore himself away and checked his watch. "One hour until dusk." He tugged the cuff of his jacket over his hand and nodded at the back of the hangar. On the wall hung a row of what looked like coarse, oversized tennis rackets, made of bent hazel covered with rawhide strips. "We'll need snowshoes."

Zechs laughed and pulled his woollen facemask down that left only his eyes free, the snow-shades dangling from a ribbon in front of his chest. "Last there has to chop firewood."

xxx

They made their way through the darkening forest, Treize a few steps ahead of Zechs, both panting through the clothmasks that left only their eyes free. Treize didn't argue when Zechs tapped him on the shoulder and took the lead, sinking knee-deep into the powdery snow in spite of the snowshoes strapped to his boots. They took it in turns to follow in each other's footsteps, and when they arrived at the dacha, they were both tired and hot beneath the thick layers of insulating clothes.

Zechs realised that Treize had called ahead before they touched down at the airstrip – the little wooden house was warm, the painted, tiled oven in the main room decked out with colourful blankets and cushions, and the steambath prepared – they only needed to light the fire that would heat the stones on which to pour cold water for steam.

Instead, Treize changed into jeans and rollneck jumper and prepared dinner – black bread, white rolls, dried meats, butter, gherkins and black tea so strong it was bitter. Zechs peeled himself out of his warm clothes more slowly, and dressed in a black v-neck and jeans that outlined the forms of his body without being blatant. He caught the occasional glance from Treize, hungry and sharp, but a strange silence had fallen between them, and Treize seemed to avoid both touch and talking.

He put a bottle of vodka on the laquered tray that he set on the colourful felt rug that covered the floorplanks. He propped a few cushions against the oven, and Zechs sat down next to him. Treize filled two glasses to the brim.

"Na sdorovye, my friend," he smiled, gazing at Zechs through the clear liquid.

"To your health, too," Zechs replied, "but I don't get it."

Treize tipped half the vodka down his throat. "What? We'll spend a few days doing nothing. We could go hunting. Check some snares, see whether we can stalk something bigger-"

"No, I don't get why you needed to come here. Work is always your excuse. What's up, Tre? And what's wrong with having a bath?"

"I'm too tired. And I was homesick, that's all. Now, let's drink."

Confused, cross and disappointed, Zechs didn't argue..

xxx

Zechs woke with a blinding headache. He was still in his clothes but covered with a thick blanket, on the warm oven bench. He lay still for a few moments. The watery light of the winter morning painted shafts of pale gold in the dusky room and made the colours of the felt rugs glow.

Footsteps crunched through the snow outside, and then a snowball thudded against the tiny, frosted window. A moment later, Treize stomped the snow off his boots in the entrance before coming in with an armful of firewood and a blast of cold air. He let the wood clatter onto the floor, knelt down and began stacking it around the oven.

Zechs sat up and watched him. "I came in last," he said.

Treize glanced up at him, smiling widely, his freckles dancing on his frost-reddened face, eyes bright. "I think you might have. But I'm feeling generous."

Zechs dropped to his knees and hugged him hard. "I know that shitty game you're playing," he hissed in Treize's ear.

Treize caught him off balance and pushed him over. "Yes? What game is that then, my friend?"

"Stringing me along!"

"I checked the guns," Treize said, slightly pressed because Zechs was squeezing his ribs. "I thought we could go hunting."

Closing his eyes, Zechs let go and sprawled out on the floor, Treize's weight on top of him. "Whatever. Why did I ever fall for this?"

"Because," Treize pushed himself up to finish stacking the wood, "I am your Commanding Officer?"

Zechs groaned. "My head..."

Treize laughed. "There's fresh coffee in the flask."

xxx

Zechs had coffee, Treize warmed himself with strong tea and a small shot of vodka. "Hair of the dog," he said when he caught Zechs' glare. They ate black bread, smoked meat and rosehip marmalade, then they went out into the glittering winter day. The forest was still save for the occasional groan and cracking of a frost-bound tree, and Zechs listened to the silence, to their own panting as they scrunched through the snow, and to his blood humming in his ears.

Treize seemed to remember all the usual spots for snares and traps, and it wasn't long before half a dozen rabbits dangled off his backpack. Zechs felt in turns sick and excited when he watched Treize remove the small, frozen bodies from the wires that he re-set, ready for the next unsuspecting or hungry creature. The Khushrenadas wasted nothing the estate provided. The meat would be cooked and preserved, or eaten immediately; the furs provided linings for new winter garments, boots or blankets.

He paused when Treize waved at him and took the gun off his backpack. Not far from them, and offwind, a small flock of deer had gathered around a clearing scattered with hay and berries.

Treize leaned against the smooth trunk of a silverbirch, took aim and fired. The flock scattered, leaving a roe behind. It lay in the snow, blood seeping away from a hole in its head. Treize made his way towards it and began breaking it open straightaway, before it could chill and freeze. Steam rose from the bloody entrails.

"I hate this," Zechs said, watching spatters of crimson melt into pristine white. "Feeding them and then shooting them. It's lazy hunting."

Treize pushed his hunting knife into the bloody mass of the animal's abdomen to carve out its liver, stomach and intestines. "Why argue about this again, Miliusha? We feed them so there'll be more than we'd have otherwise. We can't keep cows here, it's too cold. Deer are easy, and we cull them in winter so they don't starve or eat our forest."

He sliced some of the liver off and held the bloody knife, with a sliver of meat on it, out to Zechs. "First bite."

Zechs leaned over and ate the raw meat from the blank blade. When he looked up, he met Treize's gaze. Treize swallowed hard, then he swayed close and kissed Zechs' lips. "There was blood on your mouth," he said, his voice rough and low.

"Tre-"

"Happy birthday, my friend, although it is very late for that."

"It's never too late. Didn't you tell me that?"

"Yes. We should hurry, or it'll get too cold," Treize cut in, returning to his task. He started loosening the skin of the animal and began tugging it off. Zechs pulled a roll of hemp nets from the backpack and spread them out.

Treize expertly and swiftly butchered the carcass, and they packed the chunks of meat, innards and the rolled-up skin into the nets. Then they started their way back to the dacha.

xxx

Treize poured water on the hot stones of the steambath. He laid a few branches of fir on top, whose aroma suffused the thick hot mist that filled the small room. Then he stepped behind Zechs, who was soaking his hair in a wooden bucket with warm water.

"Let me help." His hands were firm and quick as he washed Zechs' hair, soaping and wringing the long strands in small batches, before pouring the water over them to rinse out the soap.

Zechs reached around and pulled him close. "I can feel you," he said, his voice low and rough with longing.

Treize kissed his shoulder. "Let's finish here."

xxx

Under the thick down cover of the bed, they turned towards each other.

"Milliardo..."

"Was that your gift?"

"Was it enough?"

"Yes." Zechs pressed firmly against Treize. "Don't waste any more time."

It was easy, and he felt ecstatic when they finally became one, Treize above him, watching him, the cautious tenderness quickly wearing off, changing into something stronger, more direct, animalic, ending in a blast of searing heat that made his mind melt.

"I love you," Treize whispered when he'd caught his breath, "so much it hurts. It makes me afraid."

"I love you too." Zechs wrapped his arms around Treize's compact, warm body and pressed him hard. "You don't need to be afraid for me."

"I can't help it," Treize murmured, settling against him heavily.

Zechs laughed. "I'm armed and dangerous."

Instead of a reply, Treize buried him in a crushing embraze.

xxx

When they arrived back at headquarters, it was dark and raining. Treize was quiet, and as he climbed out of the jet, Zechs watched him straighten and square his shoulders. Zechs opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Treize barked a command at the ground crew who saluted sharply and then swarmed the jet.

Zechs watched him stride off, and for a moment, he fiercely longed for time to rewind, from the dark, wet airfield, back to the gleaming Siberian steppes.

An open-top jeep dashed across the field towards them. Treize swung around and glanced at Zechs. "Do you want an invitation?"

He sounded amused, a touch arrogant, and impatient. For a moment, Zechs held his gaze, before shaking his head. "I wanted to check a few things."

"I need you over there." Treize jerked his head at the looming mass of buildings, beneath which his bunker office was buried. "Let's go."

Zechs settled on the backseat of the jeep, leaving the technicians to deal with the jet. He heard Treize talk over the noise of the jeep engine to the driver and thought that perhaps he had just been imagining the past few days. Treize's transformation, he found, was sudden and complete – and he realised that he'd not gotten used to it after all.

Perhaps, he thought fiercely, it would wear off. One day, when the business of war was done...

And when Treize suddenly turned and smiled at him, Zechs felt relieved.

No dream, he thought, it had been as true as the rain that drifted into his face.

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Из огня́ да в полымя́. From the hot plate into the frying pan.  
2 GW LA Burning  
3 GW LA The Khushrenada Affair  
4 GW LA The Purpose of War / Burning


	12. Chapter 12

**Episode 12 – When you dance with a bear...**

xxx

Zechs paused by the door that stood open by a small gap. Soft light filtered in a strip across the hall, and the tunes of a slow, gentle waltz drifted into the dusk. Through the gap he saw a holoclip, the images grainy and occasionally slipping into flat pictures because it was old and had been taken with ancient equipment. He remembered the party after Treize's return from L3, the quiet dance they'd shared when they'd found a rare moment alone.

Marimaia sat on the floor, watching while also sorting, languidly, through a stack of old holodisks. Photographs lay strewn around her. The room smelled musky, of dust, old paper and dry roses.

Zechs pushed the door open, and she glanced up when she heard his steps. The hologram swayed between them, showing the vestibule full of festive looking people, most of them dancing like so many ghosts, whilst the old-fashioned recordplayer by the couch played.

Marimaia rose and smoothed out her jumper. "Hi."

"I heard the tune," Zechs said quietly.

She reddened. "I wondered... I mean, would you show me? I've never danced."

He hesitated, but then he held out his hand. "Why not."

She laid her hand in his, and he gave her a thin smile. "When you dance with a bear, you can't stop when you're tired."1

"What?"

"A saying. Something Treize told me when I enlisted. He never really got over it. The shock that I'd done something without his approval, against his will."

"Controlfreak," Marimaia muttered.

Zechs nodded. "Yes. Most of the time, I liked that."

"Really?"

"Why not? I trusted him."

"Not always."

"No, not always. But most of the time, I did."

"Even when he tried to save his ass by chasing you with a bunch of mobile dolls? My grandfather told me about it."

"Even then."

_We both knew that it wasn't what it seemed. Covering your back, yes, so you could say you tried everything possible to hunt me down. The Foundation's latest technology, no less, that sadly failed to prove its worth against a single human pilot, never mind Zero. A winning argument all round..._

The image spun more slowly, coming almost to a standstill. Marimaia's grip on Zechs' arm tightened. He held her hand, settled the other lightly on her waist, and spun her slowly through the ghostly crowd. The music was distant, an echo of the past, and it crossed his mind that he belonged there, too.

"I've never trusted anyone," she said crossly.

He felt a twinge of regret as he skidded back into the present. "Not even your mother?"

"I knew she was hiding something. I loved her though. She was a good mother."

_No guarantee of love though... _

He made no reply, letting himself drift with his memories. Treize's bitter break with his mother, his own shock at seeing something in Treize he'd never glimpsed before, and his guilt and anger at being made the object of strife again in a place he'd believed to be safe. He recalled waiting for Treize to make amends, and wondering whether that side had been carefully concealed, or whether it was something new, brought on by what had happened on L3.

_You never made up. Uncompromising, in a way you'd not be with your worst enemies..._

He suppressed a shiver. Marimaia trod on his toes a few times, and her rhythm faltered now and then. He could feel her palms grow damp and saw small beads of sweat pearl on her temples and forehead as she was biting her lip, trying to gaze down to watch her feet.

"It won't work," he said, touched by the echo of the Treize's words. For a few heartbeats, he could almost feel his breathing against his cheek, the touch of Treize's hand against the small of his back-

"Oh." Marimaia tried to pull back.

The moment passed, and Zechs shook his head. "No, it won't work if you keep doing that, looking down. Relax."

It felt strange, he thought, to lead this dance. Close and awkward, unfamiliar and oddly overwhelming.

"He... Treize asked me to dance with him," he said, gazing past Marimaia, seeing everything and nothing. "After he got back from L3. He told me to lead, so I did."

_I was frustrated, and it made me nervous... why was that? Because for the first time I realised, I really felt that you weren't a god but just like the rest of us. Easy to hurt. How silly._

"You sound as if you still loved him," she said, avoiding his eyes. Her motions grew easier as she settled into the dance, but her fingers clutched at his arm.

"Yes, I still love him." The words didn't hurt. They came easy, and as he said them, he felt relief.

"But he's dead, and you're dying because you won't let go. Your memories are killing you."

"Without my memories, I'd be dead already."

There was a long pause, before she pulled away. "It's weird," she said, turning her back to him to switch off the holodisk and then the music. "I think I like you. I shouldn't, right? You, of all people. We're enemies. I had this thing in my head, I thought I knew exactly who you were, and now it's all different."

He sat on the couch and filled his tumbler with vodka. "A mild case of Stockholm Syndrome, I'd say."

She huffed. "Maybe. Do you always make things look small?"

He said nothing; taking a long pull from his drink, he looked across the room through the window. In the distance, he thought he could see the gleam of the gundanium shard, the lonely sentinel at the gate of the driveway. He thought that in a few days he would have to fly out to the old base and look at the pilot capsule that had become Treize's coffin. He would see the mangled, charred remains of Treize's body and confirm what he found in a dry statement to Une. He wondered whether that would be the final straw, the thing to drive him beyond endurance. And he thought of the promise he had wrung from Une – that Treize's body would be released once the trial was over, so that he could be cremated, and that she'd consider what he'd proposed.

It was enough, he thought, to justify his role at the trial, and he felt no pity for the men that had already been condemned.

Marimaia sat down next to him. "My uncle spent months in prison on Earth. My mother told me he was a changed man when he got back to L3. He'd grown bitter and resentful, and he wouldn't listen to reason anymore – all his anger went into fighting Earth... but you know that stuff anyway."

"You were close?"

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. "In a way. They were arguing all the time," she said. "My mother, my grandfather, my uncle, having those awful blazing rows. I hated that. She was going on about some Hiro Yuy and his pacifist ideas. My uncle and my grandfather were talking about that old man, Quinze, who'd met with my uncle a few times." She paused, shaking her head. "With me, Uncle Trowa was different. Like a big brother, I guess, but you wouldn't believe that, would you?"

"No," he said quietly, "I wouldn't."

xxx

**Interlude 12 - Irresistible**

xxx

Facilities were spartan at the underground bunker where Treize had turned a small office into his working and living quarters, but at least the tiny suite of two rooms had an on-suite bathroom. He was washing his hair when Zechs stepped in and took the bottle with shampoo off him.

Treize tried to take it back. "I don't need-"

"Just let me do this."

"It's silly."

"So what?"

Treize bit his lip. He looked tense and uncomfortable. Wet and dressed only in grey issue longjohns, he braced himself with both hands on the edge of the bathroom sink and let his head loll forward as Zechs rubbed shampoo in his hair. The longjohns were the same cheap stuff his troops got, regular magazine issue, cotton twill that turned stiff when washed and didn't keep warm, rubber waistbands that went slack and that Treize, like the other men, had replaced with bootlaces for drawstrings. The pants hung below his waist, making him look sloppy as if he'd just crawled out of bed, and they exposed half his backside.

"I'm glad nobody can see this," he said, his voice sounding hollow in the ceramic bowl.

"I thought you liked an audience."

"I hate clichees."

"Really?" Zechs raked his fingers through Treize's hair that had grown a little longer than regulations allowed, then he thumbed over Treize's cheek. "You need a shave."

"That'll make me irresistible."

"There's nobody here to resist you. When are you going to stop pretending? This whole brotherly bullshit?"

A dimple appeared on Treize's cheek. "I don't know. While I keep it up, you'd have chances with Dorothy."

"No thanks. I know what I want."

"You should... Milliardo... ouch, dammit! Let me-"

"Shut it. Why can you bear all this crap and not cope with a stupid hairwash?"

Treize sighed, folded his arms on the edge of the basin, and let his head droop lower. Zechs leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss onto his shoulder. A shudder ran through Treize, and goosepimples sprang up on his bare skin, but he said nothing. Zechs' grip grew more gentle. He turned the tap on warm and began to rinse by spilling handfuls of water over Treize's head.

"Perhaps it would change your mind," Treize said quietly. "I mean, sleeping with a girl... you don't even know how it is."

"Has it changed your mind?"

A small, startled break, then Treize said, "I love you."

"Then tell me whether I'm missing something. No?" A forceful tug made Treize raise his head a little so that Zechs could rinse his fringe. "I had opportunities, and I had offers. It's nice to know, but everytime I could have, I didn't want to anymore. It sort of fell down. Hold your breath." He turned on the showerhead and held it over Treize's head. Treize's half-hearted protest drowned in a splutter. Finally, Zechs switched the water off and tossed a towel over Treize's head.

As Treize straightened and raised his arms to grab it, Zechs caught him in an embrace so forceful that it made Treize croak. "Anyway," Zechs said, his voice scratchy and low as his hands covered Treize's cotton-clad middle. "You meant to tell me..."

Treize struggled with the towel. "I... ah... not now, Milliardo, I have... dammit, I got work, and so do you."

Zechs pushed him back. "Fine, go and beat off. You must be bursting."

Treize yanked the towel off his head and glared at him. "Do you have to be like that? I have no time for spats!"

"Don't flatter yourself."

Treize shook his head and started towelling his hair dry. "Jesus, I'm tired enough to sleep a week nonstop," he murmured. Zechs counted scars and marks as he watched the play of muscles under smooth skin.

"Then sleep," he said when Treize tossed the towel onto the edge of the sink.

Treize gave him a small smile. "Yes. I will, now that you're here."

Zechs leaned agains the door of the bathroom cubicle as Treize stepped out into the cramped bedroom attached to his office. "Why are you doing it?"

Treize undressed completely, without compunction, and slipped on a fresh set of thermal grey underwear. "What?"

"I know what you're getting at, you and the Foundation."

"You shouldn't even know about the Foundation." Treize sat on the narrow cot and turned the radio on that stood on a chair by the bedside. "Or Mobile Suits, or any of that... stuff."

"Treize-"

"I have been asked to take over the negotiations with the Colonies, with immediate effect."

Zechs folded his arms. "You? Leading civilian negotiations? What signal does this send?"

Treize met his gaze coolly. "Precisely the one that is intended."

Growing pale, Zechs pushed himself away from the door. "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. It is simple – Earth is armed and ready to strike back." Treize reached for the blanket.

"And you can still sleep?"

"I can. Because I believe this is what needs to be done."

"What, to teach them a lesson? Because the kids haven't behaved?"

Treize nodded. "Yes. A memorable lesson. Painful but necessary."

"You're good at that."

For a moment, they looked at each other in silence, before Zechs nodded. "Whatever. I'm here. I'll always be here."

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 Another Russian proverb – Once you're in it, you've got to see it through.


	13. Chapter 13

**Episode 13 – Winter will find you**

xxx

Marimaia looked nervous and frightened when Zechs told her that he had to travel. Mistrusting, she demanded to know whether it was some kind of test, or a sick joke. He pressed the keys to the house into her hand and told her to suit herself. Beyond that journey he'd agreed to, everything had become unimportant and her talk washed past him like a distant murmur.

He watched Relena board a small plane, surprised to find Hiro Yuy, former Gundam pilot turned Preventer bodyguard, waiting for her at the airfield.

"Any more surprises?" Zechs remarked when he and Une were buckling into the pilot seats of Une's aircraft. Une met his eyes briefly through the visor of her pilot's cap and shook her head.

xxx

A few hours later, she stepped aside to let him go through the massive steeldoors of the polar bunker, buried deep in the permafrost soil. On the surface, where the brief summer had thawed a thin layer of earth, white and yellow flowers dotted the sparse grass of the tundra, but in the bowels of the old base, frost glittered on the walls.

The base was still intact, each girder and rivet carefully preserved with rust-sealant and coated in spaceforce-grey. It reminded him of a submarine. The rubberised steel floors of endless, cramped and cable-garlanded corridors echoed his booted steps, and then a door clanged shut, the guards outside resumed their slow pacing.

He knew the room like the back of his hand. A hangar, surprisingly large after the confined walkways, and complete with floor-to-ceiling material shelves, some with ladders, others with computerised mechanical runners and grabbers. Workbenches fitted to the walls all around, some equipped with screens and electronic testing kit for the intricate innards of gundams.

Here he had reconstructed Yuy's gundam, setting off a chain of events he thought not even Treize could have completely foreseen, although sometimes he wondered...

He could recognise the shape of the massive machine, and only then did he fully realise how much work this would have cost. Painstaking, patient, secret work, finally coming to an end. Treize's last gundam lay flat on its back, on the vast concrete floor. Outlined by neatly labelled boxes, large metal beams, planking, rusted or torched and mangled, some with remnants of paint, others pockmarked as if hit by giant grapeshot. It looked like a dead monster, broken and contorted, it's skull split open as if cloven with a gigantic axe. Inside he could see its brain – the scorched inside of the pilot's capsule, hairlike threads of wiring protruding amid molten plastic and silicone foam.

"We found the black box," Une said behind him. "It was readable, and we have deciphered the data. This means the evidence is complete."

He cleared his throat. "Where is he?"

xxx

What was left of Treize looked small and black on the gurney that Une slid out of the freezer. They had pulled a sheet up to the chest of his contorted body. Zechs felt irrationally grateful for this, yet what he saw still turned his stomach. The plastic shield of Treize's helmet had melted onto his face, and the flame-retardant fibre of his combat suit outlined limbs that had shrivelled in the enormous heat of the direct hit even before the cabin decompressed. The fire had had no time to burn before the vacuum of space suffocated it, and behind the clear plastic, the cold had preserved the raw, fleshy red of blood, blistered skin, eyesockets whose contents had burst and drained.

Zechs stared at the body's mouth, wide open, tongue stuck in a grotesque black lump against the shield. Numbly he thought that Treize, unthinking in his agony, would have instinctively yanked at the mask, ripped off the oxygen tube and sucked in air hot enough to sear his airpipe and his lungs.

He felt the system power up inside him, gaining heat and sending spikes of energy into his limbs until he felt like a live charge about to explode. He clutched his hands together behind his back. "I don't know," he said at last into the deep silence. "I don't recognise him."

xxx

"There is no doubt," Une said later, when they sat in the officer's mess over coffee and ration bars. Neither she nor Zechs had felt appetite, and only years of discipline that had become second nature kept them from going unfed. "We ran and checked the necessary DNA tests. Once the trial is over, you can have him cremated and take the ashes home, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he's long been dead."

Zechs set his cup down and wrapped his hands around it. They were trembling a little from the pills he had downed to mute the system in his mind until it felt just like pressure, enough to make his head throb. The warmth of the cup flowed into his fingers, and he could see his breath in thin white swirls in the frosty air. "He came to see me here before he gave orders to hunt me down," he said, and he felt as if it was someone else talking, as if the words were coming without his lips moving. "We had this ridiculously glamorous dinner at this table, just he and I, while my crew got drunk in the men's mess. They'd finished restoring Yuy's machine, down in the hangar where you keep the scrap now. I'd tested the system, and it was perfect."1

"Marimaia knows nothing of all this," Une said gently. "Nor does your sister."

He gave a small, disdainful snort. "I'm not stupid. But neither is she."

Une gazed down at her hands, neatly side by side on the bare table. Zechs leaned forward to catch her gaze. "You didn't need to do this to get me to be your witness. Or to convince me that he's dead."

_Not 'gone'. Dead, the absolutum. The darkness beyond all knowledge. The place where all beginnings come to an end... _There was no comfort in it. It was as hard and cold as ever.

Reluctantly, she met his eyes. "Good. But I wanted... I needed closure, too."

"That's why he trusted you," Zechs returned. "He and I, we didn't think the same way, but you always got him."

"He never said-" She shook her head. "Do you have any idea how alone I am?"

Zechs leaned back. _Alone. There are things we can never share with anyone. Things I'll take to my grave. What did you once say, Tre? Trust can be such a burden..._

For a few moments, they looked at each other, before he said, "Yes, I do."

xxx

Zechs was glad when the trial was over. He felt neither regret nor relief, but he was glad. He was looking forward to going back home. Une had finally signed off his resignation from the Mars project. He wondered whether he could think of himself as a free man now, but laughed at it.

_Not as long as Zero spooks in my head_.

Une had thought that, with the inquest into the supply issues having been reopened in the light of the new evidence, she might have the lever she needed against the Catalonias. _At last, _she had said on their flight back from the Siberian base, _they will cow. Those people are not your friends. They never wanted your reputation restored. You have a long memory, _he had replied. And Une had smiled and reminded him of who they were: soldiers of stardust, with the patience of eternity.

Returning from the chill of the base to the fading summer of the estate felt like delving into a fairyland. Une took her leave at the airstrip.

"You have a choice," she said. "Please, Milliardo, think it over. Haven't you got an aim now? I am to ask you whether you want to take part in a new trial. They think the stuff they found could help, perhaps even cure you."

"No more medicals for me. I had enough of that."

She bit her lip. "Did you read all of it?"

"This... offer? Induced Selective Amnesia? What would they have to wipe from my brain to make it normal again?"

"The tests have identified a range of triggers-"

"Anything to do with Treize, with Cinq, even my sister would have to go. What would be left of me?"

"There are ways to replace lost memories with others, better ones. There are a few people who have done this. They are happier now."

He was quiet for a few hearbeats, before shaking his head. "It wouldn't be me anymore."

"You would stop hurting. There is a chance that the system could be switched off. No more pain, no worries about losing control of it, no further erosion-"

"It's under control. You know that. Why are you so keen on wiping my mind?"

She turned red, and he saw the hurt in her eyes. "I am trying to help, that's all. There were some people who didn't even want you to see this because they want you to stay exactly as you are so they can keep using you."

"Ann." He took her hand and briefly squeezed it. "Let me be."

She looked at him for a few moments. "I'll miss you."

He laughed. "I'm not dead yet. Come and visit. I'll be happy to inspect any new boyfriends."

She smiled. "Oh, I see. But you..."

"I'll be good."

"With Marimaia?"

"Treize gave me a home. A future. I have a debt to pay. Perhaps he knew, but it doesn't matter anymore."

"There is so much work for us..."

"And many who can do it. One life, it's worth more than all of that." And perhaps, he thought, that had been the ultimate test. He felt that he had passed it, and it made him feel warm and at ease.

A small, slow smile curved Une's lips. "You're right." She reached into her jacket and brought out a memory stick. "I found what you asked for."

"Did you really not know?"

"Perhaps I didn't want to find it. Here. As far as I could see, it's the complete set."

xxx

Marimaia was sitting in an armchair just outside the French doors of the dining room. She had a blanket across her knees and a collapsible walking stick leaning against the armrest.

_Just like that day in spring, when you'd come back from the dead... tuns out that it took a needle to break to crack your shell and kill you, like Koshchey._

Zechs pulled a chair close and sat down next to her. For a while, they were silent, listening to the sounds of summer around them.

"I feel cold quite often," she said. "And my hip hurts like hell. It's that old injury. They said I was lucky the bullet missed my spine but it will never be right again. Sometimes I think I'll be fine, but it never lasts. But you know what the worst is? Its being alone."

Zechs pulled the memory stick from his jeans pocket. "You're not alone."

Before she could reply, he laid the stick into her hand. "He wrote to your mother. He tried to get in touch but the letters never left Earth. He didn't know."

She closed her fingers "You read them?"

"They're not mine to read."

xxx

**Interlude 13 – A Childlike Tune**

xxx

Treize had decided to visit 1 - secretly, risking his neck and his career, defying the odds with a boldness that Zechs thought bordered on insane. He had been condemned by the Foundation men for trying to rebuild Hiro Yuy's gundam, and Treize had been dragged through a series of formal hearings designed to wear him down, demoralise and dismantle. Instead, Treize did something that, had they truly known him, would have been predictable and frightening. He snubbed them.

He'd surprised Zechs, and he had not. They'd eaten, a strangely formal, festive dinner for two, and then Treize had ordered drinks and Zechs had settled by the piano in the officers' mess to play, Treizes looming over him, turning pages of notes and breathing vodka down his neck. Zechs enjoyed his warmth and the closeness that bridged everything that had been and all he could imagine to come.

"Don't stop," Treize murmured, his lips against Zech's ear, "It's beautiful."

Zechs winced and smiled. "I know you love me."

"Yes," Treize agreed, an odd reluctance weighing his words. "Yes, I do."

Zechs laughed. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Treize folded into a crouch, wrapped his arms around Zechs' waist, and leaned his head against Zechs' arm. Zechs let his fingers wander over the keys, and a small, wistful tune drifted into the room.

"Milliardo," Treize murmured, "Miliusha moy... my prince." He tightened his embrace a little more. "I love you. More than anything. That day my father brought you home... I forgave him everything. The perfect gift... but what terrible price you had to pay for it."

The tune faltered but didn't break.

Treize linked his hands in front of Zechs' stomach. "I wish I could have been as perfect for you, as you've been for me. I loved you from the day you arrived in my life. A little brother for me... someone to share my life with... and then..." He paused, his breathing deepening. "I don't know what happened."

Zechs settled one hand on Treize's. "Nothing," he said laconically into the melody.

"We changed."

"Not much."

Treize rose and blew gently into Zechs' hair. "When this war is finished, our world won't be the same."

Zechs stopped playing, resting his fingers on the keys.

Treize laid his hands on Zechs' shoulders. "Do you trust me?" A small break, a rift in time, before he said, "Trust me. Please."

Zechs closed the piano and got up, turning towards Treize until they were almost nose to nose. For a moment, they looked at each other.

"I do," Zechs said quietly.

Treize touched his jaw and lightly kissed his cheek. "I trust you too."

xxx

They;d flown to the estate to dodge fate a little longer, to enjoy a few days of blissful oblivion2 – not enough to drown out the drums of war, or to break the unrelenting pace of Treize's plans – and then it was all over. Zechs was fleeing back to the old base deep in the frozen Siberian tundra to seize Hiro Yuy's gundam before destiny could catch up with him, and Treize was returning to the Specials headquarters to face what was a military tribunal in all but name.

At the base, a letter was waiting for Zechs with nothing but a string of numbers, scrawled in pencil on the torn-off margin of a newspaper. A communication frequency. He clambered into the pilot cabin of the Mobile Suit to get his handheld scanner – the same old thing he'd used as a child to pick up private stations – and tuned it until it found the signal.

A distant, patchy transmission, shadows slowly darkening on the palm-sized screen, and then the grainy face of a young man appeared. Brown hair, dark eyes, a cool smile on a thin, sharpfeatured face.

"Colonel Marquise. Thank you for getting in touch."

The plastic cover of the pilot's seat creaked as Zechs sat back in the darkness of the suit's cabin. "You are-"

"The man whose identity I've borrowed has to be back on shift in thirty six hours. Until then, I am that man."

"You won't tell me where you are, or how you got that note into this place?"

"Does it worry you? I wonder how much your General doesn't tell you, but perhaps he is worried too. I have an offer to make."

"I'm not dealing with you."

"Please hear me out, Colonel. There's no dishonour in retaining your ideals, and I hope that what I have to say will appeal to you. You've tried to broker peace before, and you may understand how it feels to be defenceless against those that burn and pillage your home. In return for your commitment and for bringing Zero with you, we offer you a rank equivalent to yours, with the appropriate pay. You would have command of a modern space force-"

"A bunch of irregulars arguing among themselves, and armed with a handful of old Mobile Suits-"

"Yes," came the laconic reply, "but things may change. All it takes is determination. We have that, Colonel."

"Who is paying you? Dekim's Foundation?"

"We have our sponsors. You know where to find us. You'd have to figure out how to get there, and I'd make sure you don't get shot down on arrival."

"You are assuming too much."

The man leaned forward, his gaze intense. "Thirty six hours, Colonel."

The screen turned black, and Zechs listened into the silence.

All he heard was his own heartbeat.

xxx

He transmitted his answer only a couple of hours later, when he was already on his way, the gundam shooting through Earth's atmosphere like a white-hot arrow.

Trowa Barton's men were waiting for him, surrounding L3 with a ring of Mobile Suits that were armed and bristling, ready to shoot Zechs down should he aim for the colony.

Yet after he'd fended off the Mobile Dolls Treize had sent after him, Zechs had powered down the suit's weapons systems, all but the one that had grown into him. He arrived battered but buzzing, the Zero system powering his suit and his mind and drowning out his doubts.

When he docked the suit to step aboard the ship of Whitefang's commander, the young man was waiting for him.

He smiled as Zechs climbed out of the airlock, and offered his hand. "Welcome, Colonel."

Zechs shook it quietly. "So you are Dekim's son?"

The man's grip was firm and warm, his smile cool but true. "Trowa. Call me Trowa." 3

xxx

**NOTES:**

1 GW LA Winter  
2 LA Winter  
3 Trowa Barton - the original owner of the name. Owing to the flow of the story, I've decided to warp the original timing a little.


	14. Chapter 14

**Epilogue**

xxx

**This is it. Thank you to the wonderful karina001 to whom this story is dedicated - your feedback was lovely and much appreciated!**

xxx

He was brushing his horse down when Marimaia came into the stable. She watched him until he nodded at her. "She's been lame for a few days, but she's fine now. I'm going to take her outside for a walk before she gets to run around again."

xxx

They were walking at a gentle pace, Zechs watching the horse's gait for irregularities, Marimaia holding on to a thick handful of mane. She looked pale and withdrawn, as if caught in an endless nightmare.

_Just as I feel,_ he thought.

"You look rubbish," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"You look like shit. As if you'd seen a ghost."

It was enough to make him falter, and he leaned heavily against the animal. "Bull," he said roughly.

"You're such a crappy liar. You got to quit grieving sometime, you know."

He swallowed to get rid of the tightness in his throat, and the words came before he could stop them. "Treize was everything to me."

"I am here now," she flung back at him, "what about me?"

It was as if she'd yanked a sheet off the future. It had been too obvious for him to want to see, but now it was there, as clear as the summer morning. And something inside him changed.

Dust flimmered in the air as they turned from the meadow onto the forest road. The heat of summer laced with the scents of drying grass and warm bark. "I couldn't go back," she said, her voice tense and shivery. "Not now. I'd rather die."

Zechs reached into the backpocket of his jeans. He pulled out a carefully folded document on strong, official paper, slightly worn from being carried around like this. "Your visa has come through."

She blinked and scrubbed at her face, a harsh, angry gesture, before taking the document. He watched as she read in silence. He saw a tear glitter on her eyelashes, and then it dripped off as they began to flow, relentless and in silence.

"You won't be able to move out of the area," he said, feeling somewhat helpless and annoyed, "you need me as a guarantor, and it can be revoked. But it's something."

She shook her head. "You don't get it. I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. It's all... alien."

"I know a teacher in the village; I've asked her to come to the house for a while until you can go out there. And we'll get rid of your tracker."

She swallowed a few times and turned her face away. "It was easier when I could hate you. Now, I have nothing."

The horse pressed against him; he lightly slapped the animal's neck to steer it back on track. "You have a life if you want one."

"I didn't choose this. The truth is that I'll still have to jump when Une whistles, just like you. It's never going to change."

"You can choose what to make of it."

_I've chosen too. Another set of tests, hit and miss trials with new medication, more pain and hope and worry... who knows if it's worth that. But I know what you'd have said. And perhaps I'm not beyond help after all..._

The unshod hooves of the horse clopped quietly on the dirt road, and it snorted softly when Zechs ruffled its mane. "Hey, you're fine again..."

"I don't like them. Horses. They're so big."

Zechs laughed. "I'm not mad about them either, but they're easier to keep here than a tractor."

Marimaia wiped her cheek against her raised shoulder before glancing at him. "I've never seen you laugh before. I mean, as if you meant it. I read the letters. There weren't that many – six, over three months, then two more after a few weeks, and another one after a year. They weren't long. He said that he was sorry and asked how she was doing. It sounded like... talking to a friend. No more. He never mentioned me, so perhaps he had no clue. I was an accident."

Zechs halted the horse and stroked its nose, a vague smile on his lips. The animal pushed its soft, velvety nostrils against his palm and gave a low, contented wicker. He kept caressing it. "Did your mother love you?"

Marimaia gazed up into the deep blue sky. A lark was singing, too high to be seen, the sound distant yet clear amid the buzz of summer. "Yes."

He turned the animal back towards the meadow and unhooked the holster. The horse shook itself, then it lowered its head to nose around in the dust and dry grass at the verge, before trotting off towards the fresh green nearer the house.

"There is no past," he said, "and no future. There is now and here."

"I don't get it. Why are you doing this?"

"It's self-serving. Makes me feel better."

"Would it be the same if I wasn't his daughter?"

Zechs shrugged. "Does it matter anymore?" He held out his hand. "Let's go back. There's a lot of work to do. I have to talk with the solicitors, and the books have to be checked."

"So it's all roses now?" she asked, a bitter twang to her tone even as she reluctantly laid her hand in his.

He gripped it firmly. "Yes, all roses."

xxx

Preventer forensics had released Treize's body, and Zechs had flown back to the old base one more time to watch it being cremated in the big furnace that doubled as an incinerator and heated the whole underground complex.

He was surprised to find the crew of the old base dressed up in their uniforms, and they had one ready for him too. Treize was going with military honours. Zechs went to the officer quarters to put the uniform on. It had the correct insignia for his old rank.

_Before I became a traitor. When the world seemed still clear. No, that's a lie..._

He tugged the tunic straight and buttoned up the dress jacket. For a moment, he looked at himself in the shiny steel mirror in the shower cubicle. He felt at home and at the same time alien, wearing the cool dark-red cloth, shimmering with braids and ribbons, the buttons polished to a high gloss, the gold of the plaits and epaulets darkened but clean. Slowly he tugged on the knee-high parade boots that looked as ridiculous as ever to him. He pulled on the white dress gloves, and then he stepped out into the steel corridor.

There was no music and no speeches. The lump of plastic and frozen flesh that once had been a living man was encased in a plain wooden casket, ready to be pushed into the flames. They had left the lid off and covered Treize's form with the blue Specials flag instead – perhaps the one, Zechs thought numbly, that had unfurled at the mass funeral after the Lake Victoria attack. Une and the men stood at attention, waiting.

Zechs stepped forward. He couldn't think of anything to say, his mind numb, a strange weakness filling his limbs.

So he did at last what had been unthinkable an eternity ago. In full view of everyone, dressed in his smart uniform that proclaimed him as an elite soldier of the Specials, he drew back the blue cloth and leaned down. Placing one hand on Treize's frozen chest, where his heart had been, Zechs kissed the plastic of the visor where it had melted against Treize's flesh.

And when he stepped back, he saw the crew salute in silence.

xxx

When at last he took the flag, folded into a tight triangle, and the small steel tube that held Treize's ashes from Une, it felt alien to him.

xxx

He flew back to the estate. Relena's call reached him at the airfield. She looked pretty on the small screen of his mobile phone that he had taken so that Marimaia could reach him.

Relena waved at him, then she grew serious. "I wish we'd had more time to talk. I wanted to ask-" She drew a quick, deep breath. "You were right. Peace needs shields. Milliardo, I want you to come to Cinq. The Council has agreed; we'd like you to become Chief Defence Consultant to the Cinq government."

He settled into his jeep. For a moment, he gazed at her hopeful face, before shaking his head. "I can't do that."

"There's nobody I'd trust more."

"You don't know me, Relena."

"You're my brother!"

"You don't know Zechs Marquise, and pray you never will."

There was a small pause, then she said, "It's that girl, isn't it?"

"It's a lot of things."

"Milliardo, please. What about our duty?"

"She's my duty, too. We're the same."

"I'm hardly seeing you anymore, and time is just slipping by..."

"Lena... Lenotchka... There are enough capable people you can trust. Come and visit, you know you're always welcome."

She bit her lip, and for a few heartbeats she reminded him painfully of the little girl of four clutching his hand in the chaos of their burning home, but then she blinked and gave him a slow, wistful smile. "Yes. I love you. I needed to tell you that. Don't be a stranger, brother." And then the call clicked off.

xxx

He wandered out to the Gundanium shard that guarded the driveway. A blinding headache was thumping in his temples, and he thought of the journey to Moscow that awaited him, the tests the specialists had suggested, and that he'd be able to visit his past with Marimaia by his side.

_Moscow evenings... you liked the song, and I liked the evenings..._

For a while, he just stood there, gazing at the twisted metal, and then he laid back his head and looked up into the blue summer sky. High above circled a bird of prey. Zechs shaded his eyes to watch until it wheeled out of sight, melting into the light.

He unscrewed the lid of the tube and let the ash drift over his palm. The breeze picked it up, and a thin stream of black dust flowed from his hand. It rose gently and then dispersed.

xxx

Marimaia waited for him by the door to the old house. She took his hand, a strange, warm gesture. His first instinct was to pull back, but her grip was strong and firm.

"You're crying," she said.

"I miss him," he said, his voice quiet and hoarse. "And I'm not crying."

Marimaia squeezed his hand, holding on as much as holding fast. "It's a beautiful day."

Zechs swallowed against the tightness in his throat, agains the choking and the pain. "Yes," he said at last, "it is."

_Life, _he thought, the pain as sharp as ever, _It's not so bad, Tre. _

xxx

**THE END**


End file.
